L'autoritratto di Giuseppe Tominz con il fratello Francesco, by Giuseppe Tominz, 1819

The artist, early in his career, living in Rome at the time and rather glamorously dressed in some version of ancient Roman attire, has portrayed himself "at work" with his beloved brother Francesco - fashionably dressed in the current mode, attended by his dogs - who is seated on the artist's knee.

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Giuseppe Tominz (sometimes called Jožef Jakob Tominc) (6 July 1790, Gorizia – 22 April 1866, Gradiscutta in Val Vipacco), Italian painter, who lived and worked in the Austrian Empire and in Italy. He was one of the most prominent Italian portraitists of the Biedermeier period.

Born in what is now Western Slovenia, the second of eleven children of an Italian ironware dealer, he began his study of painting early, learning from local painters. At nineteen he went to Rome, with the support of Archduchess Mariana, a sister of the Austrian Emperor. He soon won awards and recognition and, while still in Rome, he married and would have two sons. He pursued his career, at various times, in Vienna, Trieste, and Ljubljana, but would always return home to Gorizia. After 1850, a gradual loss of sight caused him to need the assistance of his elder son, also an artist. As commissions became less frequent, the family also opened a photography studio to help maintain their standard of living. He died at his Slovenian estate at the age of seventy-five.