The gaze of a very young Mario Sturani fixes the viewer with a determined look, reflecting the passions and vast cultural interests of a promising yet complex artist. [...] The passion for animals and nature is already evident in the Self-portrait with jay feather, executed around 1928 and dedicated to his friend Celestino Durando, where the black and white feather is "rendered with attention to camouflage in the its immediacy as a find from the author's naturalistic collection ". The alternation of the two colors of the feather could represent an exhibited metaphor of dark and bright days, with a reference to the contemporary literary efforts of Sturani intent on writing an autobiographical novel entitled Il bruno e l'azzurro. The stylistic choice of the unfinished, already experimented in another self-portrait of 1927, and the graphic nervousness of the pencil stroke emphasize the few parts detected with oil colors, especially the penetrating gaze and the contrast of the white collar on the intense blue of the dress, while the background is covered with a quick brushstroke of thin color. In the angular features of the face emerges the taste close to the Viennese secession that Sturani had acquired from the Dalmatian Ugo Zovetti, a significant element of the vastness of cultural contributions meditated by the Turin artist.