Gaetano Chierici was an Italian painter who specialised in anecdotal genre scenes. He first studied at the Scuola di Belle Arti in his home town of Reggio Emilia from 1850, then moved to the Academy of Fine Arts in Modena in 1852 and to the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence in 1858, finishing his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. In the mid-1860s, he returned to his home town, where he taught painting and, in 1889, was a co-founder of the "Società reggiana per l'Africa". In 1890, he travelled to Eritrea for several months. After his trip, he often used African motifs in his paintings. Nowadays, his genre scenes can be seen mainly in Italian museums. Since Chierici participated several times in the exhibition of the Royal Academy in London in the 1870s and 1880s, some of his paintings are in English and American collections. He painted the self-portrait exhibited in the Uffizi, which served as the model for this portrait by Roland Schauls, on a colour palette.