The Self-Portrait: A History
Mirrors, signatures and a free model: how painters made themselves the sitter from van Eyck’s 1433 panel to photography
A self-portrait is a likeness the maker produces of their own body, often with a mirror, a signature and a claim on professional status. This history follows that practice through oil, print and camera, four visitable works, and the critics who treated the genre as vanity, workshop drill or autobiography.