The work is mentioned by Late Renaissance art biographer Giorgio Vasari, who lists it as one of three small-size paintings that the artist brought to Rome with him in 1525.

[1] The portrait was donated to pope Clement VII, and later to writer Pietro Aretino, in whose house Vasari himself, then still a child, saw it.

Through the intercession of Andrea Palladio, in 1560 the work went to Venetian sculptor Alessandro Vittoria, who bequeathed it to emperor Rudolf II.

"Along the very right edge of the composition the artist has even included an indication of the gilded wooden frame containing the portrait he is ostensibly working on, made visible by the acute angle of the mirror’s surface....

The sheen of the mirror is evoked in the lustrous tone of the artist’s forehead and right cheek; the texture of his garments by a range of brushstrokes.... As a support for the portrait, the artist even used a curved wooden panel that mimics the precise shape and size of the convex mirror he used to view his reflection".