Self-portraits

The self-portrait is a relatively recent genre. You'd think artists started to paint themselves around 6000 BCE, when humans polished obsidian into the first simple mirrors, or a few millennia later, when copper mirrors were developed in Mesopotamia and Egypt. But nope, the selfie as we know it today didn't appear until 1484, when a 13 year old boy in Nuremberg sketched himself in silverpoint. The boy, Albrecht Durer, became a famous artist and printmaker of the Northern Renaissance, and punctuated his early life with more self-portraits, each more confident than the last. But was Durer really the first self-portraitist? And why do so many artists paint themselves?

Secret Selfies

While Durer is the first known artist to repeatedly dedicate entire canvases to their own face, he was not the first artist to represent themselves in their work. Throughout the Italian Renaissance, and in Medieval and Persian art before that, many artists had hidden themselves in group scenes, like Sandro Botticelli's 1475 painting of the Adoration of the Magi. You can spot Sandro on the far right—he's the blond in a tan robe. These subtle selfies are called self-inserts, and are less sneaky than they may seem—through history artists have often used patrons as the models for religious or mythical figures. Botticelli's Adoration crams five members of the wealthy and influential Medici family into the scene along with himself. Self-insertion isn't always subtle though. In Jahangir Preferring a Sufi Shaikh to Kings, the Mughal emperor Jahangir accepts gifts from four men: a religious leader, an Ottoman Sultan, King James I of England, and from the artist himself, the court painter Bichitr. The artist stands with international royalty, a bold statement for the early 1600s.

Adoration of the Magi (Zanobi Altar) 1476, Sandro Botticelli

Why do artists create self-portraits?

The self-portrait as we know it today focuses on the artist themselves, often with eyes fixed on the viewer. It's a bold art form, requiring the artist to examine themselves as a subject and to situate their body in the canon. The self-portrait can be a practice of therapy, self-discovery, or personal myth-making. While artists represent themselves for many reasons, here are a few themes to look out for:

Artists may use self-portraiture to locate themselves in their geography and culture, as in Self-Portrait on the Border Line Between Mexico and the United States by Frida Khalo, Turkmen Decorations and Self-Portrait by Durdy Bayramov, and in Chéri Samba's inversion of European conventions in The real map of the world.
Self-definition as an artist is a common theme, with artists showing themselves at their easels, brushes in hand, like Benny Andrews's Portrait of a Collagist, and often in a spacious studio with attentive students to signal success, as in Courbet's The Painter's Studio or Adélaïde Labille-Guiard's Self-Portrait with Two Pupils.
Self-portraiture can be a powerful tool to redefine and refute gender norms, as seen in Claude Cahun's What do you want from me? and Romaine Brooks' Self-portrait from 1923.
And an alarming number of artists depict themselves dead, including James Ensor in The Skeleton Painter, and our frustrated friend Hippolyte Bayard in Self-Portrait as Drowned Man.

...

Got questions, comments or corrections about Self-portraits? Join the conversation in our Discord, and if you enjoy content like this, consider becoming a member for exclusive essays, downloadables, and discounts in the Obelisk Store.