Vanity Fair UK - 11.2019

NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON, UK / BRIDGEMAN IMAGES VAN EYCK   ; GRAPHISCHE SAMMLUNG ALBERTINA, VIENNA, AUSTRIA / BRIDGEMAN IMAGES DÜRER  ; © THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM

DA PONTORMO    ; PRADO, MADRID, SPAIN / BRIDGEMAN IMAGES VELÁZQUEZ    

VANITY FAIR ON ART NOVEMBER 2019

By Maja Markovic, Jude Hull and André Zlattinger

IMAGE

Centuries before the irst “selie”, artists were

experimenting with the most personal art form:

self-portraiture. Today, the genre continues to evolve

hen Ovid described Narcissus pining for his own reection

in a pool of water, little did he know that the myth would be

perpetuated by countless artists gazing in mirrors, trying to

capture what Narcissus could not. Since antiquity, there has

been a fascination with the personality and status of the artist,

yet until the nal decade of the 15th century, self-portraits

were conned to the margins of illuminated manuscripts and

paintings, often among the crowds in religious narratives.

The earliest known independent self-portrait was painted in

1433 by Flemish artist Jan van Eyck, a work of both sublime

artistry and clever self-promotion. By the end of the 15th

century, a new self-awareness had elevated the spasmodic

and marginalised self-portrait into a new genre as artists

immortalised themselves in paint, on paper and in stone,

redening what it meant to be an artist.

An artist in front of a mirror made for the most patient model.

Mirrors became the mythological pools through which artists

observed themselves. The Mannerist painter Parmigianino

experimented with the optical play of a small glass convex

mirror in his Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1524), intended

to showcase his artistic skill in the hope of gaining papal

patronage. His Florentine contemporary Jacopo da Pontormo

seemingly had a more private audience in mind for his semi-

nude study pointing at a mirror (c. 1522-25), not unlike the 13-year-

old Albrecht Dürer, who drew himself (fully clothed) in 1484.

But there were few painters as fascinated with reective

surfaces as Jan van Eyck. His diminutive self-portrait in The

Arnolni Portrait (1434) demonstrated the legendary depth

and detail of his illusionism in one of the most famous mirrors

in art history. This later inspired one of the most complex

and enigmatic pictorial constructions of Western art: Diego

Velázquez’s group portrait Las Meninas (1656), in which

the viewer is placed in a silent dialogue with the artist who

confronts them from behind his easel.

By surrounding themselves with the paraphernalia of their

profession, artists like Velázquez underscored their special

Mirror

BY DIEGO VELÁZQUEZ

Las Meninas,

c. 1656

BY JACOPO DA PONTORMO

Self-Portrait,

c. 1522-25

BY ALBRECHT DÜRER

Self-Portrait at the Age of 13,

1484

BY JAN VAN EYCK

Portrait of a Man,

1433

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