In a review of The Self-Portrait: A Cultural History, Peter Conrad argues that early self-portraiture was “averse to vanity”:
Unusually, Hall’s history begins in the middle ages, because for him self-portraiture emerges as a reflex of Christian conscience, a homage to Christ’s imprinting of his agonized face on the Turin shroud. But the imitation of Christ takes courage, and it usually ends in the artist’s self-castigation. Previewing the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo actually flays himself: St. Bartholomew grips the painter’s empty epidermis, which has been painfully peeled off with a butcher’s knife.
Such stark portrayals are averse to vanity. Behind the sedate married couple in The Arnolfini Portrait, Van Eyck includes his miniaturized self reflected in a mirror – a kind of signature, but also, according to Hall, a recollection of Seneca’s claim that mirrors were invented as an aid to self-knowledge, not to encourage primping and preening. Even Dürer’s florid tresses, waxed into permanent waves when he paints himself as Christ, are more than a fancy coiffure: his hair, growing directly out of the brain, testifies to the efflorescence of his spiritual thoughts.
Mark Hudson sees something recognizably modern in such work:
The notion of the artist constructing themselves as a character in their own work may sound like an arch postmodern conceit, but from the late 15th century artists were manipulating their self-images, making themselves appear older or younger to suit their purposes, taking on fictional and biblical roles to heighten their brand profiles. Andrea Mantegna, the “richest and most famous artist of the time”, portrayed himself as a grim-faced Roman in his memorial bust, “his tumescent bulldog features” conveying a “visceral machismo”. Comparing himself in the accompanying inscription to Apelles, court artist of Alexander the Great, he brought the reflected glory of the Greek conqueror on himself and his patrons, the Gonzagas.
Meanwhile, Frances Spalding notes that self-portraits have attracted relatively little attention from art historians:
It’s hard to understand why self-portraits, as a genre, have until now been so little discussed. They include some of the greatest works of all time. Among those featured in this book are Velázquez’s Las Meninas and Courbet’s The Artist’s Studio, as well as such masterpieces as the 1665 self-portrait by Rembrandt at London’s Kenwood House, a painting seemingly devoid of any agenda other than what it feels like to carry into old age the weight of being human. Yet despite such riches, this genre has, until now, remained largely overlooked (Laura Cumming’s recent book, A Face to the World, is an exception), existing merely as subset within portraiture, which is a relatively under-investigated subject. Perhaps the huge diversity within self-portraiture, and its leaning towards bombast, have kept scholars at bay.
(Image: detail from Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment via Wikimedia Commons)
The Dish 
