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Artists' Self-Portraits
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see also:
Nicolas Poussin
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Nicolas Poussin:
Self-Portrait
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 Nicolas Poussin
Self-Portrait
(detail)
1650
At the left of the canvas there is a woman wearing a diadem with an eye. This
has been interpreted as an allegory: painting crowned as the greatest of the
arts.
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Nicolas Poussin
Self-Portrait
1650
Oil on canvas, 78 x 94 cm
Musee du Louvre, Paris
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Nicolas Poussin's Self-Portrait, executed in 1650, is a
painted theory of art: a cryptogram containing the aesthetic
principles of an artist, who, since 1628, had spent most of
his working life in Rome. Poussin had done an earlier
version of the painting in 1649 (now in the Gemaldegalerie,
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Preubischer Kulturbesitz),
painted to replace a disappointing portrait of himself which
his Parisian patrons had commissioned from a Roman artist.
The most conspicuous motif of the earlier self-portrait is
the "memento mori". The artist presents himself before a
sepulchral monument - anticipating his own -flanked by putti;
the expression on his face is almost cheerful. Viewed from a
distance he appears to be smiling, while his head, inclined
slightly to one side, suggests a melancholic mood .
Cheerfulness in the face of death demonstrated the composure
of the Stoics, a philosophy for which Poussin had some
sympathy. The early self-portrait, too, contains an allusion
to Poussin's theory of art: the title of the book "De lumine
et colore" (On light and colour). Poussin's reference to
colour here is less surprising than Anthony Blunt, who
defined Poussin as a "partisan" of "disegno" (drawing,
design), would have us believe. In his correspondence with
Paul Freart de Chantelou, Poussin repeatedly defined the
analysis of light as the basis of all painting. In Poussin's
view, echoing earlier theories of art, colour was the
modification of light. Poussin was therefore not as radical
an advocate of the "designo - colore" antithesis as
doctrinaire Classicist historians of art theory have
suggested. His practice as an artist speaks against the view
of him as onesided; instead it betrays the influence of the
Venetian colourists, in whose work the world was suffused in
a golden light.
In the self-portrait at the Louvre the artist, wearing a
dark green gown and with a stole thrown over his shoulders,
is shown in a slightly different pose: posture is erect, his
head turned to present an almost full-
face view. His facial expression is more solemn, but also
less decided. Instead of funereal symbolism, the setting is
the artist's studio, lent a strangely abstract quality by a
staggered arrangement of three framed canvases, one behind
the other, whose quadratic structure is echoed by the dark
doorframe behind them. It is apparent that the canvas
nearest to us is empty, except for a painted inscription.
The empty canvas is a cipher for the "disegno interno"
(internal idea), or "concetto" (plan), a conceptual version
of the painting which, according to a theory formulated in
1590 by Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo ("Idea dell' tempio della
pittura"), precedes its practical realisation. Poussin's
emphasis of the painters ability to work with his intellect
concurs with the ideas of the philospher and poet. At the
left of the second canvas there is a woman in front of a
landscape, wearing a diadem with an eye; a man's hands are
reaching out to hold her
shoulders. This has - probably rightly -been interpreted as
an allegory: painting crowned as the greatest of the arts.
At the same time, the embrace is a symbol for the bond of
friendship between Poussin and his patron Chantelou.
A tiny, but highly significant detail is the ring Poussin is
wearing on the little finger of his right hand, which rests
on a fastened portfolio. Studied closely, the stone reveals
itself to be a diamond, cut in the shape of a four-sided
pyramid. As an emblematic motif, this symbolised the Stoic
notion of Constantia, or stability and strength of
character. Poussin was referring here both to his friendship
with Chantelou, and to his intention to remain firmly loyal
to the strict discipline of heroic Classicism. Popularised
by contemporary moralizing literature, the notion of
personal identity had begun to make itself felt in this era
for the first time, and constancy in a person's attitudes,
thoughts and conduct was its most important quality.
Poussin struggled to maintain his independence of mind and
loyality to his own ideals against the demands of the French
court, and, in so doing, articulated the growing sense of
autonomy of the ascendant bourgoisie.
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 Nicolas Poussin
Self-Portrait
(detail)
1650
Portrait of the painter Nicolas Poussin of Les
Andelys (painted) at Rome during the Jubilee
Year of 1650, aged 56 vears.
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 Nicolas Poussin
Self-Portrait
(detail)
1650
The ring holds a diamond, cut in the shape of a four-sided pyramid.
As an
emblematic motif, this was the Stoic symbol of stabillity and strength of
character.
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Nicolas Poussin
Self-Portrait
(detail)
1649 |
Nicolas Poussin
Self-Portrait
1649
Oil on canvas, 78 x 65 cm
Staatliche Museen, Berlin
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 Nicolas Poussin
Self-Portrait
(detail)
1649
Nicolas Poussin of Les
Andelys, Member of the Academy of Rome,
Principal Painter in Ordinary to Louis, the rightful King of
France.
Painted at Rome in the year of our Lord 1649, aged 55 years.
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see also:
Rembrandt van Rijn
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Rembrandt:
Self-Portraits
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Rembrandt
Self-portrait
1640
Oil on canvas, 102 x 80 cm
National Gallery, London
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Very few artists of the modern period have left as many self-portraits as
Rembrandt. His lifelong study of his own physiognomy, his desire to keep a
pictorial record of his constantly changing physical and psychological features,
can be taken as a sign of his interest in autobiography and as proof of the
belief he nurtured, in spite of the many crises and setbacks he suffered, in the
uniqueness of the individual.
Different kinds of autobiographical narrative - memoirs, for instance, or
episodes from lived experience interspersed in fictional texts (as with
Grimmelshausen), or regular diary entries - were becoming increasingly important
in seventeenth-century literature. "Affective individualism" (Lawrence Stone),
which had begun to penetrate every aspect of bourgeois experience, had entered
poetry, too. Petrarch had anticipated this centuries before with the interest he
provoked in his biography: "You will wish to know what kind of person I was."
In the seventeenth century, this humanist motto was generally seen in a
confessional or religious light. Rembrandt is known to have maintained frequent
contact with members of many different confessions, religious groupings and
sects (Jews, Mennonites, Socinians etc.), and it is probably not far wrong to
assume that qualities which all these groups had in common - their ethical
awareness, their intensely emotional character, and even their potentially
oppositional nature - had a profound influence on Rembrandt's character.
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Rembrandt
Self-Portrait
1629
Oil on panel, 15,5 x 12,5 cm
Alte Pinakothek, Munich
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On the other hand, it would be quite wrong to see Rembrandt's self-portraiture
entirely in the light of his religious introspection. Indeed, his method reveals
somewhat more affinity to doctrines of emotional expression which influenced
contemporary academic art theory. In his early self-portraits, and in a number of smaller etchings which, significantly enough, are
almost entirely devoid of ornament, allowing the artist to concentrate
exclusively on the face, Rembrandt experiments with constantly changing facial
expressions, working his way through the full gamut of human feelings and their
physiognomic equivalents until, at one end of the scale, all that remains is a
grimace. The face, the focal point of the personality, is given
symbolic status: it represents human feeling.
Rembrandt thus acts out and gives visual form to different emotional
states: alarm, worry, care, the torment of fear; or he portrays
himself as someone staring with desperate, distracted eyes, with his
hair standing on end (1630), or as a person laughing and showing his
teeth. While Charles Le Brun (1619-1690), the Director of the
Academie Royale founded in 1648, reduced the various forms of
emotional expression to a schematic code in his posthumously (1698)
published tract "Methode pour apprendre a dessiner des passions,
proposee dans une conference sur l'expression generale et
particuliere" (Method of learning how to draw the passions, proposed
during a lecture on expression in general and particular), Rembrandt
plumbed the depths of human emotion and discovered, by practical
experiment, the means of its visual representation.
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Rembrandt
Little Self-portrait
1656-58
Oil on wood, 48,5 x 40,5 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
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Rembrandt was not, therefore, giving vent to his own feelings. He
was not interested in revealing his "innermost being", but rather in
exploiting his own mimic abilities to produce an encyclopaedia of
the human feelings. He fashioned an instrument of empirical
psychology out of his theatrical, indeed comic, ability to slip into
and simultaneously observe a wide range of emotional states: an
example of the valuable contribution made by the fine arts to the
development of a modern science whose subject was the study of
different forms of human individuality.
While the examples of his work mentioned above, especially those of
the early period, presented a range of physical reflexes or
expressive reactions to emotional states, his portraits of the
middle period go beyond spontaneous physical expressiveness to
experiment with a number of conventional poses and gestures. The
pose in his self-portrait of 1640, imitates Titian's so-called
"Ariosto"
portrait, with the sitter's sidelong glance and his bent arm resting
on a parapet. Another self-portrait, executed in 1659, now in the
Mellon Collection at the National Gallery, Washington, imitates the
type of pose established by Raphael's portrait of Castiglione.
Rembrandt purports here to paint himself as a "gentiluomo"
(nobleman, gentleman), or "cortegiano" (courtier).
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Titian
Ariosto
1512
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Rembrandt
Self-portrait
1640
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Rembrandt
Self-Portrait
1659
Oil on canvas, 84,5 x 66 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington
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A third form of self-expression explored by Rembrandt is the use
of ornamental devices, attributes and costumes to define status and
present a calculated, or desirable, image of the self. Thus
Rembrandt leaps from one role to another, constantly altering his
social position. Sometimes, he appears as a beggar with outstretched
hand, sitting on a rock (1630); there is perhaps good reason, too,
for a number of his self-portraits to turn up surrounded by sketched
scenes of beggars. At other times, we find him posing as a
sophisticated gentleman with reinforced collar, chain of honour,
precious stones or other attributes of rank; on one occasion, he
paints himself as a prince with a scimitar (1634, etching. In the
same year, interestingly enough, he portrays himself as a burgher
wearing a beret). Yet another guise is that of the oriental sultan
in a turban, executed in full-length; in this painting, the
histrionic artificiality of the scene is underlined by the presence
of an alternative costume in the shape of Roman helmets lying on a
table behind him (1631, and c. 1631).
It would, of course, be possible to interpret the enormous variety
of roles and poses in Rembrandt's self-portraiture psychologically,
seeing them as examples of megalomaniacal wishful thinking, or as
the sign of a frustrated social climber, or as a form of imaginative
compensation for the suffering he experienced during various
critical periods of his life. Some of this may well be true. Beyond
mere wish-fulfilment, however, the majority of the approximately
ninety self-portraits show Rembrandt mentally reflecting on social
structures whose new permeability, flexibility and dynamism were the
result of the bourgeois revolution in the Netherlands. Economic
aspects played an important role here, too, although not in the
superficial sense of a trademark representing the artist's business
interest in marketing his own subjectivity, as Svetlana Alpers has
suggested.153 Rembrandt's work elucidated the nature of
macro-economic structures to the individual who sought an
imaginative grasp of the new social reality.
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Rembrandt
Portrait of the Artist at His Easel
1660
Oil on canvas, 111 x 90 cm
Musee du Louvre, Paris
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In his final self-portrait, executed in 1669 (Cologne), Rembrandt
appears stricken by age, stooping, in a state of melancholic mirth.
This reverts to the subject of his early physiognomic studies; and
yet here, for the first time, Rembrandt's imagined role appears
consistent with his real mood. Appearances are deceptive here too,
however; it would hardlv be permissible to assume the painting
represented a proclamation of Rembrandt's true state of mind. For
once again, Rembrandt presents us with a visual puzzle, disclosing
no more than he conceals. Albert Blankert has found evidence to
suggest that Rembrandt portrayed himself here as the Greek painter
Zeuxis, after an anecdote related by Karel van Mander: "It is said
that Zeuxis put an end to his own life by suffocating on his own
excessive laughter one day while painting the likeness of a funny
old wrinkled woman... It was this which the poet meant when he
wrote: 'Are you laughing too much again? Or are you trying to
emulate the painter who laughed himself to death?"
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Rembrandt
Self-Portrait
1669
Oil on canvas, 59 x 51 cm
Mauritshuis, The Hague
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On the left of the self-portrait there is the blurred shape of a
face, probably the likeness of an old woman. The patches of light on
the shaft and pommel of the mahlstick denote a studio setting.
Considering the large number of portraits he executed of himself in
different roles, very few show Rembrandt at work, or even suggest
the nature of his profession. Apart from two self-portraits executed
in 1636 and 1648, one of which shows him from the side, drawing
(with Saskia in the background), while the other shows a frontal
view of him alone, engaged in the same activity, but standing near a
window in a dark room, only two paintings from his later period
refer to his work as an artist (1660 and 1667/68). But here, too,
the artist concentrates on rendering the face, while his painting
utensils are only vaguely suggested. In one of the paintings, in
which Rembrandt shows himself actually working at the canvas, his
utensils are just visible in the darkness of the setting; in the
other, where he seems poised between two bouts of work, his brush
and palette have been rendered immaterial to the point of
transparency by repeatedly scraping them with the brush and rubbing
in left-over paint, while the face, marked by age, is trenchantly
modelled in pastose layers of strong colour. The self-portrait in
the Frick Collection, showing him sitting majestically on his
throne, was probably conceived as a "portrait histone" (portrait
showing the sitter in significant historic costume). Here, too,
Rembrandt appears to have adopted a role: the ruler casually holding
up a sceptre in his left hand, which is resting on the armrest of
his throne. However, since the sceptre can hardly be distinguished
from a mahlstick, the impression that we are looking at a
self-portrait showing Rembrandt as a painter is probably justified.
Unlike Aert dc Gelder, who treated the Zeuxis subject (1685) as a
full historical canvas, Rembrandt's self-portrait (at Cologne), by
keeping direct allusion to the story itself to a minimum, places
emphasis on the representation of the face. The un-reflected and
disrespectful satirical treatment of deformity has vanished under
Rembrandt's treatment; what remains is a vulnerable depiction of the
ugliness age has brought to his own features. Rembrandt's laughter
does not poke fun at anybody, not even at himself. Too exhausted
even to defy his own frailty, it is an expression of the stoic
equanimity with which he resigned himself to approaching death.
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Rembrandt
Self-Portrait as Zeuxis
1669
Oil on canvas, 82,5 x 65 cm
Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne
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