The Chelsea defender's gaze is unbroken, his interest genuine and his answers thoughtful. Peering out from underneath his bubble bath of tightly-curled hair, his eyes flick away for the first time to the looming ten-foot square canvas upon which his image is the centre of attention. "I would love to take it home," he laughs, "but I don't think it will fit in my kitchen."
This somewhat sets the tone, and David Luiz is a warm, engaging character who - once he has got over his artfully-enhanced mirror image staring down at him - is completely at ease talking about a range of subjects from his humble beginnings in Sao Paulo province to lifting a trophy at the Maracana, draped in the yellow of Brazil.
This year, of course, he will hope to repeat those scenes from the Confederation Cup in the one that really matters, and hopefully without the backdrop of widescale protests. It has been a curious few years for the Selecão, with the seemingly harsh sacking of Mano Menezes signifying the end of Brazil's first cohesive long-term plan in years and also a massive risk so close to two immensely important tournaments on home soil.
In came Luiz Felipe Scolari, a World Cup winner no less, but a manager who had recently guided one of Sao Paulo's biggest clubs, Palmeiras, to relegation into Brazil's Serie B. Despite such a fresh blot on his record, Scolari's grumpy-but-lovable patriarch persona is the sort of character that goes down well with Brazilian fans and positive results soon saw him backed by the masses.
Of course, they weren't truly won round until Scolari led the Canarinha to Confederations Cup glory but, along with Carlos Alberto Parreira, Brazil now have a management team that has a trophy to go with the backing of the players, and it is the experience they bring that appears to inspire the most confidence in Luiz.

 "It's different now," he says of the transition from the 50-year-old Menezes to a management duo that has clocked up 135 years between them.
"Every coach has his own philosophy," Luiz adds, but you feel that a perception of Mano Menezes perhaps not being ready for a job of this magnitude was to blame for his removal by the CBF (Brazilian Football Confederation).
"Mano Menezes is a fantastic coach, but Scolari is a fantastic coach too, as well as being more experienced.
"It's to be expected, I suppose. This is the first time Mano Menezes got the opportunity to work with a national team whereas Scolari is now working with [Carlos Alberto] Parreira."
And it is when discussing this partnership that the Chelsea man once again comes alive, enthused by the intermittently cantankerous pair of World Cup winners.
"It's a fusion. A mix between two great coaches, two coaches that have won the World Cup before so they know how you need to work, what they need to do.
"And Scolari is a fantastic person. He's so straight and direct. He's so human."
There is obviously an immense bond between Luiz and his international manager, and despite rumours to the contrary he also seems to reserve a lot of love for club boss Jose Mourinho. Playing for Chelsea presents a different set of challenges than donning the yellow and blue of his nation, not least displacing Gary Cahill and John Terry at the heart of the Blues defence.

 It is something that has caused somewhat of a headache for Mourinho, who - despite insisting that the Brazilian is "one of the best central defenders in the world" - has opted several times now to use the 26-year-old in midfield. The benefits are obvious, a technically-assured player who can provide defensive cover and release more creative players to do what they do best - think Claude Makelele with Brian May's hair - but there is a feeling that playing Luiz in midfield is a cop-out... A statement of doubt in his concentration and positioning, most (in)famously distilled into one sentence when Gary Neville said the Chelsea man played like a Playstation character being controlled by a child.
But does Luiz care? Not a jot. Where does he want to play? Well, just about anywhere he can, really...
"I want to play football and I want to help the team. It doesn't matter if I play midfield, if I play in defence, if I play as a striker.
As a striker?
"I hope to one day," he laughs. "The opportunity would be nice."
His answer speaks volumes of either his confidence in his own ability or his child-like love for the game (maybe both) but where did it come from? This defender-midfielder problem, if it is indeed a problem, appears to stem from the fact that he is quite good with a ball at his feet, and it turns out that playing in midfield is simply a return to his origins.
A young buck playing for Vitoria after failing to make the grade at Sao Paulo, he moved the 1200 miles to sign for the Salvador club at just 14. His coach in the youth team didn't think much of the midfielder going by the name of David Luiz Marinho, and Joao Paulo Sampaio has since admitted that he was on the brink of releasing the youngster.
"I changed my position when I was 16 or 17," says Luiz. "I started in midfield, or further forward as a number 10, and then in one tournament we lost two defenders to injury in the same game and we didn't have any on the bench.
"So I played at the back, and the manager of the first team saw me and he said 'I want this guy in the first team' and that was that!"
It was the break he needed, and an extraordinary tale that took him to Portugal before his big-money move to England, two European titles and then international success last summer at the Maracana.

The emergence of Dante, the Bayern Munich centre-back, had meant that David Luiz has found himself with a genuine rival to form the Selecao's central defensive partnership alongside Thiago Silva. But his displays in the Confederations Cup were outstanding, culminating in a split-second that crystalized his tournament into one unspeakably brilliant moment.
With Spain trailing 1-0 in the final and just a few minutes until the half-time break, Juan Mata played the unmarked Pedro into the inside-right channel of the Brazil penalty area. It had capped a sweeping counter-attack that was destined to end in an equaliser as the Barcelona forward curled the ball round the onrushing Julio Cesar - destined, that is, until Luiz's decisive intervention.
Haring in from a left-sided position, the defender showed all the attributes his detractors accuse him of lacking; a quick mind, superb reading of the game and positional awareness. Throwing himself to the ground he managed to slide his body between the ball and the goal-line in barely believable fashion, and astonishingly he simultaneously looped the ball over the crossbar, clearing danger in a manner that had seemed in any normal situation to be impossible - the centre-back's equivalent of Gordon Banks' famous 1970 save from Pele in the heat of Guadalajara.

"To have 80,000 people singing my name after I saved that goal. When I was laying down on that line. It was incredible."
Minutes later they scored a second and the rest, as they say, is history.
So, despite the increasing competition in defence, it is moments like those that mean Luiz will be in Brazil's first XI this summer. Yet he isn't complacent, and David Luiz speaks in glowing terms of the improvement in the country's defenders - an area the country has traditionally (or perhaps just stereotypically) struggled in.
"I think it's the evolution of football," he ponders.
"You can see Brazil playing against defensive countries with different philosophies and, I think, to be a great defender you need to know about these tactics. To learn.
"Before, in Brazil, you'd always try to play on the front foot against these fantastic strikers because they've got magic, and creativity, that you need to stop. Now you need to be more tactical, you need to read the game, you need to know about the space and where you need to be.
"There are many, many names of top quality in our defence now, and it means Brazil is no longer just known for its strikers but for its great team."
We must wait until July to find out just how great, but for the man who'd be just as happy up front as he is at the heart of Brazil's backline there remains one aim - a certain trophy just 36.5 centimetres tall and 6.2kg in weight that he and his countrymen so crave.
And you feel that he might well make room for that one in his kitchen.