Self-portrait - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

A self-portrait is a representation of an artist, drawn, painted, photographed, or sculpted by the artist. Although self-portraits have been made by artists since the earliest times, it is not until the Early Renaissance in the mid 15th century that artists can be frequently identified depicting themselves as either the main subject, or as important characters in their work. With better and cheaper mirror

Mirror

A mirror is an object that reflects light or sound in a way that preserves much of its original quality prior to its contact with the mirror. Some mirrors also filter out some wavelengths, while preserving other wavelengths in the reflection...

s, and the advent of the panel

Panel painting

A panel painting is a painting made on a flat panel made of wood, either a single piece, or a number of pieces joined together. Until canvas became the more popular support medium in the 16th century, it was the normal form of support for a painting not on a wall or vellum, which was used for...

portrait, many painters, sculptors and printmakers tried some form of self-portraiture. Portrait of a Man in a Turban by Jan van Eyck

Jan van Eyck

Jan van Eyck was a Flemish painter active in Bruges and considered one of the best Northern European painters of the 15th century....

of 1433 may well be the earliest known panel self-portrait. He painted a separate portrait of his wife, and he belonged to the social group that had begun to commission portraits, already more common among wealthy Netherlanders than south of the Alps. The genre is venerable, but not until the Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

, with increased wealth and interest in the individual as a subject, did it become truly popular.

Types of self-portrait

A self-portrait may be a portrait

Portrait

thumb|250px|right|Portrait of [[Thomas Jefferson]] by [[Rembrandt Peale]], 1805. [[New-York Historical Society]].A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness,...

of the artist, or a portrait included in a larger work, including a group portrait. Many painters are said to have included depictions of specific individuals, including themselves, in painting figures in religious or other types of composition. Such paintings were not intended publicly to depict the actual persons as themselves, but the facts would have been known at the time to artist and patron, creating a talking point as well as a public test of the artist's skill.

In the earliest surviving examples of medieval and renaissance

Renaissance

self-portraiture, historical or mythical scenes (from the Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

or classical literature) were depicted using a number of actual persons as models, often including the artist, giving the work a multiple function as portraiture, self-portraiture and history/myth painting. In these works, the artist usually appears as a face in the crowd or group, often towards the edges or corner of the work and behind the main participants. Rubens's The Four Philosphers (1611–12) is a good example. This culminated in the 17th century with the work of Jan de Bray

Jan de Bray

Jan de Bray , was a Dutch Golden Age painter.-Biography:Jan de Bray was born in Haarlem. According to Houbraken he was the most famous pupil of his father, the architect and poet Salomon de Bray. Houbraken called Jan the "pearl in Haarlem's crown"...

. Many artistic media have been used; apart from paintings, drawings and prints

Old master print

An old master print is a work of art produced by a printing process within the Western tradition . A date of about 1830 is usually taken as marking the end of the period whose prints are covered by this term. The main techniques concerned are woodcut, engraving and etching, although there are...

have been especially important.

In the famous Arnolfini Portrait
Arnolfini portrait
The Arnolfini Portrait is an oil painting on oak panel dated 1434 by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck. It is also known as The Arnolfini Wedding, The Arnolfini Marriage, The Arnolfini Double Portrait or the Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife, among other titles...

(1434), Jan van Eyck

Jan van Eyck

Jan van Eyck was a Flemish painter active in Bruges and considered one of the best Northern European painters of the 15th century....

is probably one of two figures glimpsed in a mirror - a susprisingly modern conceit. The Van Eyck painting may have inspired Diego Velázquez

Diego Velázquez

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was a Spanish painter who was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV. He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary Baroque period, important as a portrait artist...

to depict himself in full view as the painter creating Las Meninas
Las Meninas
Las Meninas is a 1656 painting by Diego Velázquez, the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age, in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. The work's complex and enigmatic composition raises questions about reality and illusion, and creates an uncertain relationship between the viewer and the figures...

(1656), as the Van Eyck hung in the palace in Madrid where he worked. This was another modern flourish, given that he appears as the painter (previously unseen in official royal portraiture) and standing close to the King's family group who were the supposed main subjects of the painting.

In what may be one of the earliest childhood self-portraits now surviving, Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...

depicts himself as in naturalistic style as a 13-year old boy in 1484. In later years he appears variously as a merchant in the background of Biblical scenes and as Christ

Christ

Christ is the English term for the Greek meaning "the anointed one". It is a translation of the Hebrew , usually transliterated into English as Messiah or Mashiach...

.

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...

may have drawn a picture of himself

Self-portrait (Leonardo da Vinci)

The portrait of a man in red chalk in the Biblioteca Reale, Turin is widely accepted as a self portrait of Leonardo da Vinci. It is thought that Leonardo da Vinci drew this self-portrait at about the age of 60...

at the age of 60, in around 1512. The picture is often straightforwardly reproduced as Da Vinci's appearance, although this is not certain.

In the 17th Century, Rembrandt painted a range of self-portraits. In The Prodigal Son in the Tavern

The Prodigal Son in the Tavern

The Prodigal Son in the Brothel is a painting by the Dutch master Rembrandt. It is housed in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister of Dresden, Germany. It is signed "REMBRANDT F."....

(c1637), one of the earliest self-portraits with family, the painting probably includes Saskia, Rembrandt's wife, one of the earliest depictions of a family member by a famous artist. Family and professional group paintings, including the artist's depiction, became increasingly common from the 17th Century onwards.

Gallery: Inserted self-portraits

Image:Sandro Botticelli 085.jpg|Sandro Botticelli

Sandro Botticelli

Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance...

's painting of the Adoration of the Magi
Adoration of the Magi in Art
The Adoration of the Magi is the name traditionally given to the Christian subject in the Nativity of Jesus in art in which the three Magi, represented as kings, especially in the West, having found Jesus by following a star, lay before him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and worship him...

has an "inserted self-portrait". The position in the (right) corner, and the gaze out to the viewer, are very typical of such self-portraits.
Image:Masaccio Self Portrait.jpg|Masaccio

Masaccio

Masaccio , born Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Simone, was the first great painter of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaissance. According to Vasari, Masaccio was the best painter of his generation because of his skill at recreating lifelike figures and movements as well as a convincing sense...

inserted self-portrait from the Brancacci Chapel

Brancacci Chapel

The Brancacci Chapel is a chapel in the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence, central Italy. It is sometimes called the "Sistine Chapel of the early Renaissance" for its painting cycle, among the most famous and influential of the period. Construction of the chapel was commissioned by...

frescoes (as is the Filippino Lippi), 1424-6.
Image:Resurrection detail.JPG|Piero della Francesca

Piero della Francesca

Piero della Francesca was a painter of the Early Renaissance. As testified by Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Artists, to contemporaries he was also known as a mathematician and geometer. Nowadays Piero della Francesca is chiefly appreciated for his art. His painting was characterized by its...

as a sleeping soldier in his Resurrection, 1463, fresco, Sansepolcro.
Image:Filippino Lippi 007.jpg|Filippino Lippi

Filippino Lippi

Filippino Lippi was an Italian painter working during the High Renaissance in Florence, Italy.-Biography:...

as a figure in his Martyrdom of Saint Peter, fresco

Fresco

Fresco is any of several related mural painting types, executed on plaster on walls or ceilings. The word fresco comes from the Greek word affresca which derives from the Latin word for "fresh". Frescoes first developed in the ancient world and continued to be popular through the Renaissance...

, 1481-82, Brancacci Chapel

Brancacci Chapel

, Florence. He is at the extreme right of a crowded composition.

Women painters

Women artists

Women artists have been involved in making art in most times and places. Often certain certain media are associated with women, particularly textile arts; however, these gender roles in art change in different cultures and communities...

are notable producers of self-portraits; almost all significant women painters have left an example, from Caterina van Hemessen to the prolific Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, and Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo de Rivera was a Mexican painter, born in Coyoacán, and perhaps best known for her self-portraits....

, as well as Alice Neel

Alice Neel

Alice Neel was an American artist known for her oil on canvas portraits of friends, family, lovers, poets, artists and strangers...

, Paula Modersohn-Becker

Paula Modersohn-Becker

Paula Modersohn-Becker was a German painter and one of the most important representatives of early expressionism. In a brief career, cut short by an embolism at the age of 31, she created a number of groundbreaking images of great intensity.-Life and work:Paula Becker was born and grew up in...

and Jenny Saville

Jenny Saville

Jenny Saville is a contemporary British painter; best known as one of the Young British Artists. She is known for her large-scale painted depictions of naked women.-Life and career:Saville works and lives in Oxford, England...

who painted themselves in the nude. Vigée-Lebrun painted a total of 37 self-portraits, many of which were copies of earlier ones, painted for sale. Until the 20th century women were usually unable to train in drawing the nude, which made it difficult for them to paint large figure compositions, and portraiture was a common specialism. Until the 19th century, they usually showed themselves in the act of painting, or at least holding a brush and palette. More often than with men, the viewer wonders if the clothes worn were those they normally painted in.

Antiquity

Images of artists at work are encountered in Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...

ian painting, and sculpture and also on Ancient Greek

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

vase

Vase

The vase is an open container, often used to hold cut flowers. It can be made from a number of materials including ceramics and glass. The vase is often decorated and thus used to extend the beauty of its contents....

s. One of first self-portraits was made by the Pharaoh Akhenaten

Akhenaten

Akhenaten also spelled Echnaton,Ikhnaton,and Khuenaten;meaning "living spirit of Aten") known before the fifth year of his reign as Amenhotep IV , was a Pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt who ruled for 17 years and died perhaps in 1336 BC or 1334 BC...

's chief sculptor Bak in 1365 BC. Plutarch

Plutarch

Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...

mentions that the Ancient Greek sculptor Phidias

Phidias

Phidias or the great Pheidias , was a Greek sculptor, painter and architect, who lived in the 5th century BC, and is commonly regarded as one of the greatest of all sculptors of Classical Greece: Phidias' Statue of Zeus at Olympia was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World...

had included a likeness of himself in a number of characters in the "Battle of the Amazons

Amazonomachy

An Amazonomachy was a portrayal of legendary battle between Greeks and Amazons...

" on the Parthenon

Parthenon

The Parthenon is a temple on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, dedicated to the Greek goddess Athena, whom the people of Athens considered their virgin patron. Its construction began in 447 BC when the Athenian Empire was at the height of its power. It was completed in 438 BC, although...

, and there are classical references to painted self-portraits, none of which have survived.

Asia

Portraits and self-portraits have a longer continuous history in Asian art than in Europe. Many in the scholar gentleman

Scholar-bureaucrats

Scholar-officials or Scholar-bureaucrats were civil servants appointed by the emperor of China to perform day-to-day governance from the Sui Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1912, China's last imperial dynasty. These officials mostly came from the well-educated men known as the...

tradition are quite small, depicting the artist in a large landscape, illustrating a poem in calligraphy

Calligraphy

Calligraphy is a type of visual art. It is often called the art of fancy lettering . A contemporary definition of calligraphic practice is "the art of giving form to signs in an expressive, harmonious and skillful manner"...

on his experience of the scene. Another tradition, associated with Zen Buddhism, produced lively semi-caricatured self-portraits, whilst others remain closer to the conventions of the formal portrait.

European art

Illuminated manuscripts contain a number of apparent self-portraits, notably those of Saint Dunstan

Dunstan

Dunstan was an Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, a Bishop of Worcester, a Bishop of London, and an Archbishop of Canterbury, later canonised as a saint. His work restored monastic life in England and reformed the English Church...

and Matthew Paris

Matthew Paris

Matthew Paris was a Benedictine monk, English chronicler, artist in illuminated manuscripts and cartographer, based at St Albans Abbey in Hertfordshire...

. Most of these either show the artist at work, or presenting the finished book to either a donor or a sacred figure, or venerating such a figure.
Orcagna is believed to have painted himself as a figure in a fresco

Fresco

of 1359, which became, at least according to art historians - Vasari records a number of such traditions- a common practice of artists. However for earlier artists, with no other portrait to compare to, these descriptions are necessarily rather speculative. In Italy Giotto di Bondone

Giotto di Bondone

Giotto di Bondone , better known simply as Giotto, was an Italian painter and architect from Florence in the late Middle Ages...

(1267—1337) included himself in the cycle of "eminent men" in the Castle of Naples, Masaccio

Masaccio

(1401—1428) depicted himself as one of the apostles

Apostle (Christian)

The term apostle is derived from Classical Greek ἀπόστολος , meaning one who is sent away, from στέλλω + από . The literal meaning in English is therefore an "emissary", from the Latin mitto + ex...

in the painting of the Brancacci Chapel

Brancacci Chapel

, and Benozzo Gozzoli

Benozzo Gozzoli

Benozzo Gozzoli was an Italian Renaissance painter from Florence. He is best known for a series of murals in the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi depicting festive, vibrant processions with wonderful attention to detail and a pronounced International Gothic influence.-Apprenticeship:He was born Benozzo di...

includes himself, with other portraits, in the Palazzo Medici Procession of the Magi (1459), with his name written on his hat. This is imitated a few years later by Sandro Botticelli

Sandro Botticelli

Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance...

, as a spectator of the Adoration of the Magi, who turns from the scene to look at us. (1475).
14th century sculpted portrait busts of and by the Parler family

Peter Parler

Peter Parler, , Schwäbisch Gmünd – July 13, 1399, Prague) was a German architect, best known for building Saint Vitus Cathedral and Charles Bridge in Prague, where he lived from about 1356....

in Prague Cathedral include self-portraits, and are among the earliest such busts of non-royal figues. Ghiberti

Lorenzo Ghiberti

Lorenzo Ghiberti , born Lorenzo di Bartolo, was an Italian artist of the early Renaissance best known for works in sculpture and metalworking.-Early life:...

included a small head of himself in his most famous work.
Notably, the earliest self-portrait painted in England, other than in a manuscript

Manuscript

A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...

, is the miniature painted in oils on panel by the German artist Gerlach Flicke

Gerlach Flicke

Gerlach Flicke , Latin name Gerbarus Fleccius, and at least once referred to as "Garlicke", was a German portrait painter who is known for his work in London as an artist of the Tudor court. Flicke was imprisoned in London and he made a portrait miniature whilst there...

, 1554.

Albrecht Dürer, 1471–1528, the first prolific self-portraitist

Albrecht Dürer

was an artist highly conscious of his public image and reputation, whose main income came from his old master print

Old master print

s, all containing his famous monogram, which were sold throughout Europe. He probably depicted himself more often than any artist before him, producing at least twelve images, including three oil portraits, and figures in four altarpiece

Altarpiece

An altarpiece is a picture or relief representing a religious subject and suspended in a frame behind the altar of a church. The altarpiece is often made up of two or more separate panels created using a technique known as panel painting. It is then called a diptych, triptych or polyptych for two,...

s. The earliest is a silverpoint

Silverpoint

Silverpoint is a traditional drawing technique first used by Medieval scribes on manuscripts.-History:A silverpoint drawing is made by dragging a silver rod or wire across a surface, often prepared with gesso or primer. Silverpoint is one of several types of metalpoint used by scribes, craftsmen...

drawing created when he was thirteen years old. At twenty-two Dürer painted the Self-portrait with Carnation (1493, Louvre), probably to send to his new fiancée. The Madrid self-portrait (1498, Prado

Museo del Prado

The Museo del Prado is the main Spanish national art museum, located in central Madrid. It features one of the world's finest collections of European art, from the 12th century to the early 19th century, based on the former Spanish Royal Collection, and unquestionably the best single collection of...

) depicts Dürer as a dandy in fashionable Italian dress, reflecting the international success he had achieved by then. In his last self-portrait

Self-Portrait (Dürer)

Self-Portrait is a painting on wood panel by the German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer. Painted early in 1500, just before his 29th birthday, it is the last of his three painted self-portraits...

, sold or given to the city of Nuremberg

Nuremberg

Nuremberg[p] is a city in the German state of Bavaria, in the administrative region of Middle Franconia. Situated on the Pegnitz river and the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal, it is located about north of Munich and is Franconia's largest city. The population is 505,664...

, and displayed publicly, which very few portraits then were, the artist depicted himself with an unmistakable resemblance to Jesus Christ (Munich, Alte Pinakothek

Alte Pinakothek

The Alte Pinakothek is an art museum situated in the Kunstareal in Munich, Germany. It is one of the oldest galleries in the world and houses one of the most famous collections of Old Master paintings...

). He later re-used the face in a religious engraving of, revealingly, the Veil of Veronica

Veil of Veronica

The Veil of Veronica, or Sudarium , often called simply "The Veronica" and known in Italian as the Volto Santo or Holy Face is a Catholic relic, which, according to legend, bears the likeness of the Face of Jesus not made by human hand The Veil of Veronica, or Sudarium (Latin for sweat-cloth),...

, Christ's own "self-portrait" (B.25). A self-portrait in gouache

Gouache

Gouache[p], also spelled guache, the name of which derives from the Italian guazzo, water paint, splash or bodycolor is a type of paint consisting of pigment suspended in water. A binding agent, usually gum arabic, is also present, just as in watercolor...

he sent to Raphael

Raphael

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...

has not survived. A woodcut of a bathhouse and a drawing show virtually-nude self-portraits.

Renaissance and Baroque

The great Italian painters of the Renaissance made comparatively few formal painted self-portraits, but often included themselves in larger works. Most individual self-portraits they have left were straight-forward depictions; Dürer's showmanship was rarely followed, although a controversially attributed Self-portrait as David by Giorgione

Giorgione

Giorgione was a Venetian painter of the High Renaissance in Venice, whose career was cut off by his death at a little over thirty. Giorgione is known for the elusive poetic quality of his work, though only about six surviving paintings are acknowledged for certain to be his work...

would have something of the same spirit, if it is a self-portrait. There is a portrait by Pietro Perugino

Pietro Perugino

Pietro Perugino , born Pietro Vannucci, was an Italian Renaissance painter of the Umbrian school, who developed some of the qualities that found classic expression in the High Renaissance...

of about 1500 (Collegio del Cambio of Perugia

Perugia

Perugia is the capital city of the region of Umbria in central Italy, near the River Tiber, and the capital of the province of Perugia. The city is located about north of Rome. It covers a high hilltop and part of the valleys around the area....

), and one by the young Parmigianino

Parmigianino

Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola , also known as Francesco Mazzola or more commonly as Parmigianino or sometimes "Parmigiano", was an Italian Mannerist painter and printmaker active in Florence, Rome, Bologna, and his native city of Parma...

showing the view in a convex mirror. There is also a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci

(1512)., and self-portraits in larger works by Michelangelo

Michelangelo

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...

, who gave his face to the skin of St. Bartholomew in the Last Judgement of the Sistine Chapel

Sistine Chapel

Sistine Chapel is the best-known chapel in the Apostolic Palace, the official residence of the Pope in Vatican City. It is famous for its architecture and its decoration that was frescoed throughout by Renaissance artists including Michelangelo, Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino, Pinturicchio...

(1536–1541), and Raphael

Raphael

who is seen in the characters of School of Athens 1510, or with a friend who holds his shoulder (1518). Also notable are two portraits

Self-Portrait (Titian, Madrid)

Self-Portrait is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Italian painter Titian. Dating to about 1560, when Titian was at least 70 years old, it is the latter of two surviving self-portraits by the artist. The work is a realistic and unflattering depiction of the physical effects of old age, and as such...

of Titian

Titian

Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488/1490 – 27 August 1576 better known as Titian was an Italian painter, the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near...

as an old man in the 1560s. Paolo Veronese

Paolo Veronese

Paolo Veronese was an Italian painter of the Renaissance in Venice, famous for paintings such as The Wedding at Cana and The Feast in the House of Levi...

appears as a violinist clothed in white in his Marriage at Cana
Marriage at Cana
In Christianity, the transformation of water into wine at the Marriage at Cana or Wedding at Cana is the first miracle of Jesus in the Gospel of John....

, accompanied by Titian on the bass viol (1562). Northern artists continued to make more individual portraits, often looking very much like their other bourgeois sitters.

Titian

Titian

's Allegory of Prudence
Allegory of Prudence
The Allegory of Prudence is an oil painting by the Italian master Titian. It is in the National Gallery, London.The picture portrays three human heads, facing different directions, hanging over three animal heads, depicting a wolf, a lion and a dog...

(c. 1565-70) is thought to depict Titian, his son Orazio, and a young cousin, Marco Vecellio. Titian also painted a late self-portrait in 1567; apparently his first. Caravaggio

Caravaggio

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1593 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, had a formative influence on the Baroque...

painted himself in Bacchus
Bacchus (Caravaggio)
Bacchus is a painting by Italian Baroque master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio . It is held in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence....

at the beginning of his career, then appears in the staffage

Staffage

In painting, staffage, pronounced "staffarge" as in French, are the human and animal figures depicted in a scene, especially a landscape, that are not the primary subject matter of the work. Before the adoption of the word into the visual arts in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,...

of some of his larger paintings. Finally, the head of Goliath held by David

David

David was the second king of the united Kingdom of Israel according to the Hebrew Bible and, according to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, an ancestor of Jesus Christ through both Saint Joseph and Mary...

(1605–10, Galleria Borghese

Galleria Borghese

The Borghese Gallery is an art gallery in Rome, Italy, housed in the former Villa Borghese Pinciana. It is a building that was from the first integral with its gardens, nowadays considered quite separately by tourists as the Villa Borghese gardens...

) is Caravaggio's own.

Image:Bellini selfportrait.jpg|Gentile Bellini

Gentile Bellini

Gentile Bellini was an Italian painter. From 1474 he was the official portrait artist for the Doges of Venice.- Biography :...

, black chalk, 1496 or earlier, Berlin
Image:Adam Kraft.jpg|Nuremberg

Nuremberg

sculptor Adam Kraft

Adam Kraft

Adam Kraft was a German stone sculptor and master builder of the late Gothic period, based in Nuremberg and with a documented career there from 1490...

, self-portrait from St Lorenz Church, 1490s.
Image:Possible Self-Portrait of Leonardo da Vinci.jpg|Probable self-portrait by Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci

, c. 1512-1515
Image:Nicholas Hilliard 021.jpg|Nicholas Hilliard

Nicholas Hilliard

Nicholas Hilliard was an English goldsmith and limner best known for his portrait miniatures of members of the courts of Elizabeth I and James I of England. He mostly painted small oval miniatures, but also some larger cabinet miniatures, up to about ten inches tall, and at least two famous...

, self-portrait miniature

Portrait miniature

A portrait miniature is a miniature portrait painting, usually executed in gouache, watercolour, or enamel.Portrait miniatures began to flourish in 16th century Europe and the art was practiced during the 17th century and 18th century...

, 1577

Rembrandt and the 17th century in Northern Europe

In the 17th century, Flemish

Flanders

Flanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp...

and Dutch artists painted themselves far more often; by this date most successful artists had a position in society where a member of any trade would consider having their portrait painted. Very many also painted their wives and families, again following the normal practice for the middle-classes. Anthony Van Dyck

Anthony van Dyck

Sir Anthony van Dyck was a Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England. He is most famous for his portraits of Charles I of England and his family and court, painted with a relaxed elegance that was to be the dominant influence on English portrait-painting for the next...

and Peter Paul Rubens gave us numerous images of themselves, the latter also often painting his family.

Rembrandt was the most frequent self-portraitist, at least until the self-obsessed modern period, also often painting his wife, son and mistress. At one time about ninety paintings were counted as Rembrandt self-portraits, but it is now known that he had his students copy his own self-portraits as part of their training. Modern scholarship has reduced the autograph count to something over forty paintings, as well as a few drawings and thirty-one etching

Etching

Etching is the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio in the metal...

s, which include many of the most remarkable images of the group. Many show him posing in quasi-historical fancy dress, or pulling faces at himself. His oil paintings trace the progress from an uncertain young man to the dapper and very successful portrait-painter of the 1630s to the troubled but massively powerful portraits of his old age.

After Rembrandt

In Spain, there were self-portraits of Bartolomé Estéban Murillo

Bartolomé Estéban Murillo

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo was a Spanish Baroque painter. Although he is best known for his religious works, Murillo also produced a considerable number of paintings of contemporary women and children...

and Diego Velázquez

Diego Velázquez

. Francisco de Zurbarán represented himself in Luke the Evangelist

Luke the Evangelist

Luke the Evangelist was an Early Christian writer whom Church Fathers such as Jerome and Eusebius said was the author of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles...

at the feet of Christ on the cross (around 1635). In the 19th century, Goya painted himself numerous times.
French self-portraits, at least after Nicolas Poussin

Nicolas Poussin

Nicolas Poussin was a French painter in the classical style. His work predominantly features clarity, logic, and order, and favors line over color. His work serves as an alternative to the dominant Baroque style of the 17th century...

tend to show the social status of the artist, although Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin

Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin

Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin was an 18th-century French painter. He is considered a master of still life, and is also noted for his genre paintings which depict kitchen maids, children, and domestic activities...

and some other instead showed their real working costume very realistically. This was a decision all 18th century self-portraitists needed to make, although many painted themselves in both formal and informal costume in different paintings. Thereafter, one can say that most significant painters left us at least one self-portrait, even after the decline of the painted portrait with the arrival of photography. Gustave Courbet

Gustave Courbet

Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet was a French painter who led the Realist movement in 19th-century French painting. The Realist movement bridged the Romantic movement , with the Barbizon School and the Impressionists...

(see below) was perhaps the most creative self-portraitist of the 19th century, and The Artist's studio and Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet are perhaps the largest self-portraits ever painted. Both contain many figures, but are firmly centred on the heroic figure of the artist.

Prolific modern self-portraitists

One of the most famous and most prolific of self-portraitists was Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh

Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...

, who painted himself thirty-seven times between 1886 and 1889. In all of these self-portraits one is struck that the gaze of the painter is seldom directed at us; even when it is a fixed gaze, he seems to look elsewhere. These paintings vary in intensity and color and some portray the artist with bandages; representing the episode in which he severed one of his ears.

The many self-portraits of Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele was an Austrian painter. A protégé of Gustav Klimt, Schiele was a major figurative painter of the early 20th century. His work is noted for its intensity, and the many self-portraits the artist produced...

set new standards of openness, or perhaps exhibitionism

Exhibitionism

Exhibitionism refers to a desire or compulsion to expose parts of one's body – specifically the genitals or buttocks of a man or woman, or the breasts of a woman – in a public or semi-public circumstance, in crowds or groups of friends or acquaintances, or to strangers...

, representing him naked in many positions, sometimes masturbating or erect as in Eros (1911), with an enormous red erect penis. Stanley Spencer

Stanley Spencer

Sir Stanley Spencer was an English painter. Much of his work depicts Biblical scenes, from miracles to Crucifixion, happening not in the Holy Land but in the small Thames-side village where he was born and spent most of his life...

was to follow somewhat in this vein. Max Beckmann

Max Beckmann

Max Beckmann was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement...

was a prolific painter of self portraits as was Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch was a Norwegian Symbolist painter, printmaker and an important forerunner of expressionist art. His best-known composition, The Scream, is part of a series The Frieze of Life, in which Munch explored the themes of love, fear, death, melancholia, and anxiety.- Childhood :Edvard Munch...

who made great numbers of self-portrait paintings (70), prints (20) and drawings or watercolours (over 100) throughout his life, many showing him being badly treated by life, and especially by women. Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo de Rivera was a Mexican painter, born in Coyoacán, and perhaps best known for her self-portraits....

, who following a terrible accident spent many years bedridden, with only herself for a model, was another painter whose self-portraits depict great pain, in her case physical as well as mental. Her 55-odd self-portraits include many of herself from the waist up, and also some nightmarish representations which symbolize her physical sufferings.

Throughout his long career, Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

often used self-portraits to depict himself in the many different guises, disguises and incarnations of his autobiographical artistic persona. From the young unknown "Yo Picasso" period to the "Minotaur

Minotaur

In Greek mythology, the Minotaur , as the Greeks imagined him, was a creature with the head of a bull on the body of a man or, as described by Roman poet Ovid, "part man and part bull"...

in the Labyrinth

Labyrinth

In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth was an elaborate structure designed and built by the legendary artificer Daedalus for King Minos of Crete at Knossos...

" period, to the "old Cavalier

Cavalier

Cavalier was the name used by Parliamentarians for a Royalist supporter of King Charles I and son Charles II during the English Civil War, the Interregnum, and the Restoration...

" and the "lecherous old artist and model" periods. Often Picasso's self portraits depicted and revealed complicated psychological insights, both personal and profound about the inner state and well being of the artist. Another artist who painted interestingly personal and revealing self-portraits throughout his career was Pierre Bonnard

Pierre Bonnard

Pierre Bonnard was a French painter and printmaker, as well as a founding member of Les Nabis.-Biography:...

. Bonnard also painted dozens of portraits of his wife Marthe throughout her life as well. Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh

, Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin

Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...

, and Egon Schiele in particular made intense and self-revealing self-portrait paintings throughout their careers.

Gallery: painters at work

Many of the medieval portraits show the artist at work, and Jan van Eyck (above) his chaperon hat

Chaperon (headgear)

Chaperon was a form of hood or, later, highly versatile hat worn in all parts of Western Europe in the Middle Ages. Initially a utilitarian garment, it first grew a long partly decorative tail behind, and then developed into a complex, versatile and expensive headgear after what was originally the...

has the parts normally hanging loose tied up on his head, giving the misleading impression he is wearing a turban, presumably for convenience whilst he paints. In the early modern period

Early modern period

In history, the early modern period of modern history follows the late Middle Ages. Although the chronological limits of the period are open to debate, the timeframe spans the period after the late portion of the Middle Ages through the beginning of the Age of Revolutions...

, increasingly, men as well as women who painted themselves at work had to choose whether to present themselves in their best clothes, and best room, or to depict studio practice realistically. See also the Gallery of Women painters above.

Classification

Art critic Galina Vasilyeva-Shlyapina separates two basic forms of the self-portrait: "professional" portraits, in which the artist is depicted at work, and "personal" portraits, which reveal moral and psychological features. She also proposes a more detailed taxonomy: (1) the "insertable" self-portrait, where the artist inserts his or her own portrait into, for example, a group of characters related to some subject; (2) the "prestigious, or symbolic" self-portrait, where an artist depicts him- or herself in the guise of a historical person or religious hero; (3) the "group portrait" where artist is depicted with members of family or other real persons; (4) the "separate or natural" self-portrait, where the artist is depicted alone. However it might be thought these classes are rather rigid; many portraits manage to combine several of them.

With new media came a chance to create different kinds of self-portraits besides simply static painting or photographs. Many people, especially teens, use social networking sites to form their own personal identity on the internet. Still others use blogs or create personal web pages to create a space for self-expression and self-portraiture.

Mirrors and poses

The self-portrait supposes in theory the use of a mirror

Mirror

; glass mirrors became available in Europe in the 15th century. The first mirrors used were convex, introducing deformations that the artist sometimes preserved. A painting by Parmigianino

Parmigianino

in 1524 Self-portrait in a mirror, demonstrates the phenomenon. Mirrors permit surprising compositions like the Triple self-portrait by Johannes Gumpp (1646), or more recently that of Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí

Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....

shown from the back painting his wife, Gala

Gala Dalí

Gala Dalí , usually known simply as Gala, was the wife of first Paul Éluard, then Salvador Dalí, and an inspiration for them and many other writers and artists.- Early years :...

(1972–73).
This use of the mirror often results in right-handed painters representing themselves as left-handed (and vice versa). Usually the face painted is therefore a mirror image of that the rest of the world saw, unless two mirrors were used. Most of Rembrandt's self-portraits before 1660 show only one hand - the painting hand is left unpainted. He appears to have bought a larger mirror in about 1652, after which his self-portraits become larger. In 1658 a large mirror in a wood frame broke whilst being transported to his house; nonetheless, in this year he completed his Frick self-portrait, his largest.

The size of single-sheet mirrors was restricted until technical advances made in France in 1688 by Bernard Perrot. They also remained very fragile, and large ones were much more expensive pro-rata than small ones - the breakages were recut into small pieces. About 80 cms, or two and a half feet, seems to have been the maximum size until then - roughly the size of the palace mirror in Las Meninas (the convex mirror in the Arnolfini Portrait
Arnolfini portrait
The Arnolfini Portrait is an oil painting on oak panel dated 1434 by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck. It is also known as The Arnolfini Wedding, The Arnolfini Marriage, The Arnolfini Double Portrait or the Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife, among other titles...

is considered by historians impractically large, one of Van Eyck's many cunning distortions of scale). Largely for this reason, most early self-portraits show painters at no more than half-length.

Self-portraits of the artist at work were, as mentioned above, the commonest form of medieval self-portrait, and these have continued to be popular, with a specially large number from the 18th century on. One particular type in the medieval and Renaissance periods was the artist shown as Saint Luke

Luke

Luke is a male given name, and less commonly, a surname.The name Luke is derived from the Latin name , from an Ancient Greek , meaning "man from Lucania". The earliest known recording of the name is from the Bible, The Gospel of Luke, which was written around AD 70 to 90, and it is from here...

(patron saint of artists) painting the Virgin Mary. Many of these were presented to the local Guild of Saint Luke

Guild of Saint Luke

The Guild of Saint Luke was the most common name for a city guild for painters and other artists in early modern Europe, especially in the Low Countries. They were named in honor of the Evangelist Luke, the patron saint of artists, who was identified by John of Damascus as having painted the...

, to be placed in their chapel. A famous large view of the artist in his studio is The Artist's Studio
The Artist's Studio
The Artist's Studio : A Real Allegory of a Seven Year Phase in my Artistic and Moral Life is an 1855 oil painting on canvas by Gustave Courbet. It is located in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, France....

by Gustave Courbet

Gustave Courbet

(1855), an immense "Allegory" of objects and characters amid which the painter sits.

Other meanings, storytelling

The self-portraits of many Contemporary art

Contemporary art

Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...

ists and Modernists often are characterized by a strong sense of narrative

Narrative

A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...

, often but not strictly limited to vignettes from the artists life-story. Sometimes the narrative resembles fantasy, roleplaying and fiction. Besides Diego Velázquez

Diego Velázquez

, (in his painting Las Meninas

Las Meninas

Las Meninas is a 1656 painting by Diego Velázquez, the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age, in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. The work's complex and enigmatic composition raises questions about reality and illusion, and creates an uncertain relationship between the viewer and the figures...

), Rembrandt Van Rijn, Jan de Bray

Jan de Bray

, Gustave Courbet, Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh

, and Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin

Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...

other artists whose self-portraits reveal complex narratives include Pierre Bonnard

Pierre Bonnard

Pierre Bonnard was a French painter and printmaker, as well as a founding member of Les Nabis.-Biography:...

, Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century."According to art historian Michael J...

, Lucian Freud

Lucian Freud

Lucian Michael Freud, OM, CH was a British painter. Known chiefly for his thickly impasted portrait and figure paintings, he was widely considered the pre-eminent British artist of his time...

, Arshile Gorky

Arshile Gorky

Arshile Gorky was an Armenian-born American painter who had a seminal influence on Abstract Expressionism. As such, his works were often speculated to have been informed by the suffering and loss he experienced of the Armenian genocide.-Early life:...

, Alice Neel

Alice Neel

Alice Neel was an American artist known for her oil on canvas portraits of friends, family, lovers, poets, artists and strangers...

, Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

, Lucas Samaras

Lucas Samaras

Lucas Samaras , is an artist, born in Kastoria, Greece. He studied at Rutgers University on a scholarship, where he met Allan Kaprow and George Segal. While at Rutgers, he joined Gamma Sigma . He participated in Kaprow's "Happenings," and posed for Segal's plaster sculptures...

, Jenny Saville

Jenny Saville

, Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman is an American photographer and film director, best known for her conceptual portraits. Sherman currently lives and works in New York City. In 1995, she was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. She is represented by Sprüth Magers Berlin London in and Metro Pictures gallery in...

, Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol

Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...

and Gilbert and George

Gilbert and George

Gilbert & George are two artists who work together as a collaborative duo. Gilbert Proesch and George Passmore have become famous for their distinctive, highly formal appearance and manner and their brightly coloured graphic-style photo-based artworks.-Early life:Gilbert Proesch was...

Self-promotion

The self-portrait can be a very effective form of advertising for an artist, especially of course for a portrait painter. Dürer was not really interested in portraits commercially, but made good use of his extraordinary self-portraits to advertise himself as an artist, something he was very sophisticated in doing. Rembrandt made his living principally from portrait-painting during his most successful period, and like Van Dyck and Joshua Reynolds

Joshua Reynolds

Sir Joshua Reynolds RA FRS FRSA was an influential 18th-century English painter, specialising in portraits and promoting the "Grand Style" in painting which depended on idealization of the imperfect. He was one of the founders and first President of the Royal Academy...

, many of his portraits were certainly intended to advertise his skills. With the advent of regular Academy shows, many artists tried to produce memorable self-portraits to make an impression on the artistic stage. A recent exhibition at the National Gallery, London, Rebels and Martyrs, did not shrink from the comic bathos that sometimes resulted. An example from the 21st century is Arnaud Prinstet, an otherwise little-known contemporary artist who has generated good amounts of publicity by undertaking to paint his self portrait every day. On the other hand, some artists depicted themselves very much as they did other clients.

Diagnosing the self-portrait

Some artists who suffered neurological or physical diseases have left self-portraits of themselves that have allowed later physicians to attempt to analyze disruptions of mental processes; and many of these analyses have entered into the textbooks of neurology

Neurology

Neurology is a medical specialty dealing with disorders of the nervous system. Specifically, it deals with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of disease involving the central, peripheral, and autonomic nervous systems, including their coverings, blood vessels, and all effector tissue,...

.

The self-portraits of artists who suffered mental illnesses, give a unique possibility to physicians for investigating self-perception in people with psychological, psychiatric or neurologic disturbances.

Russian sexologist Igor Kon

Igor Kon

Igor Semyonovich Kon was a Soviet and Russian philosopher, psychologist, and sexologist. His scientific publications have been translated into various languages.-Biography:...

in his article about masturbation

Masturbation

Masturbation refers to sexual stimulation of a person's own genitals, usually to the point of orgasm. The stimulation can be performed manually, by use of objects or tools, or by some combination of these methods. Masturbation is a common form of autoeroticism...

notes that a habit of masturbating may be depicted in works of art, particularly paintings. So Austrian artist Egon Schiele depicted himself so occupied in one of his self-portraits. Kon observes that this painting does not portray pleasure

Pleasure

Pleasure describes the broad class of mental states that humans and other animals experience as positive, enjoyable, or worth seeking. It includes more specific mental states such as happiness, entertainment, enjoyment, ecstasy, and euphoria...

from the masturbation, but a feeling of solitude

Solitude

Solitude is a state of seclusion or isolation, i.e., lack of contact with people. It may stem from bad relationships, deliberate choice, infectious disease, mental disorders, neurological disorders or circumstances of employment or situation .Short-term solitude is often valued as a time when one...

. Creations of Schiele are analyzed by other researchers in terms of sexuality

Human sexual behavior

Human sexual activities or human sexual practices or human sexual behavior refers to the manner in which humans experience and express their sexuality. People engage in a variety of sexual acts from time to time, and for a wide variety of reasons...

, and particularly pedophilia

Pedophilia

As a medical diagnosis, pedophilia is defined as a psychiatric disorder in adults or late adolescents typically characterized by a primary or exclusive sexual interest in prepubescent children...

Collections

One of the most distinguished, and oldest, collections of self-portraits is in the Vasari Corridor

Vasari Corridor

The Vasari Corridor is an elevated enclosed passageway in Florence, central Italy, which connects the Palazzo Vecchio with the Palazzo Pitti. Beginning on the south side of the Palazzo Vecchio, it then joins the Uffizi Gallery and leaves on its south side, crossing the Lungarno dei Archibusieri...

of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

. It was originally the collection by the Cardinal

Cardinal (Catholicism)

A cardinal is a senior ecclesiastical official, usually an ordained bishop, and ecclesiastical prince of the Catholic Church. They are collectively known as the College of Cardinals, which as a body elects a new pope. The duties of the cardinals include attending the meetings of the College and...

Leopoldo de' Medici

Leopoldo de' Medici was an Italian cardinal, scholar, patron of the arts and Governor of Siena. He was the brother of Ferdinando II de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany.-Biography:...

in the second part of the 17th century and has been maintained and expanded until the present time. It is mostly not on view for general visitors, although some paintings are shown in the main galleries. Many famous artists have not been able to resist an invitation to donate a self-portrait to the collection. It comprises more than 200 portraits, in particular those of Pietro da Cortona

Pietro da Cortona

Pietro da Cortona, by the name of Pietro Berrettini, born Pietro Berrettini da Cortona, was the leading Italian Baroque painter of his time and also one of the key architects in the emergence of Roman Baroque architecture. He was also an important decorator...

, Charles Le Brun

Charles Le Brun

Charles Le Brun , a French painter and art theorist, became the all-powerful, peerless master of 17th-century French art.-Biography:-Early life and training:...

, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, and Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century."According to art historian Michael J...

. Other important collections are housed at the National Portrait Gallery (United Kingdom) in London (with various satellite outstations elsewhere), and the National Portrait Gallery

National Portrait Gallery (United States)

The National Portrait Gallery is an art gallery in Washington, D.C., administered by the Smithsonian Institution. Its collections focus on images of famous individual Americans.-Building:...

in Washington, D.C..

Photo-portraits

Two methods of obtaining photographic self-portraits are widespread. One is photographing a reflection in the mirror, and the other photographing one's self with the camera in an outstretched hand. Eleazar Langman photographed his reflection on the surface of a nickel-plated teapot.

Another method involves setting the camera or capture device upon a tripod, or surface. One might then set the camera's timer, or use a remote controlled shutter release.

Finally, setting up the camera, entering the scene and having an assistant release the shutter (i.e., if the presence of a cable release is unwanted in the photo) can arguably be regarded as a photographic self-portrait, as well.

Types of self-portrait

Gallery: Inserted self-portraits

Women painters

Antiquity

Asia

European art

Albrecht Dürer, 1471–1528, the first prolific self-portraitist

Renaissance and Baroque

Rembrandt and the 17th century in Northern Europe

After Rembrandt

Prolific modern self-portraitists

Gallery: painters at work

Classification

Mirrors and poses

Other meanings, storytelling

Self-promotion

Diagnosing the self-portrait

Collections

Photo-portraits

See also

Further reading

Not in English

Self-portrait in neurology

Psychology of self-perception

External links