Peter Parler’s Self-Portrait (c.1370-79)
Peter Parler, Self-Portrait (c.1370-79) St. Vitus' Cathedral, Prague
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Peter Parler was a master mason and architect whose sculpted self-portrait adorns a wall of St. Vitus' Cathedral in Prague, his most important accomplishment. As an architect with few works to his name other than his buildings, he would not be a normal candidate for inclusion on this site. He was nevertheless a mason, first and foremost, and is said to have sculpted not only this self-portrait but other busts too.
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Left: Peter Parler, Self-Portrait
Right: Head of Emperor Charles IV from St. Vitus' Cathedral
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Georgia Somers Wright has noted that Parler's likeness is based on that of Emperor Charles IV (near left) but without the smile.1 Either his own likeness is based on the Emperor's or the earlier head of the Emperor was based on his own. It is one of the initial similarities between artist and king that became a major, but still little-known, tradition in Western art.
See conclusion below
From Fouquet's painted portrait of Charles VII in 1450 through the many portraits of Napoleon by diverse artists in the early nineteenth century to Lucian Freud's portrait of Queen Elizabeth II in the twenty-first, artists have painted rulers in their own likeness as a symbol of their own majesty in art.
More Works by Parler
Notes:
1. Georgia Sommers Wright, “The Reinvention of the Portrait Likeness in the Fourteenth Century”, Gesta 39, No. 2, Robert Branner and the Gothic (2000), p. 126
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