EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

Raphael, a Brother, and an Initial Idea

Art, according to EPPH, is esoteric, a visual primer on the Inner Tradition created by women and men every bit as spiritual as a robed monk, often more so. Indeed in the Middle Ages most artists were clerics or monks working in the scriptorium of a monastery. After the recent revelation here that Raphael’s Virgin and Child in the Sistine Madonna (right) form a giant R for Raphael, I thought I might resurrect a self-portrait discussed in an earlier post (left). Brother Rufillus, an artist and monk working in the 12th century, depicted himself inside an R painting it, again the initial of his own name. And, like the Renaissance master, he did not do so in a secular setting but in an illumination introducing the life of a saint.

James Hall has recently written of it: “There is a powerful sense in this self-portrait initial that the individual artist lives inside his own artwork, and is solely responsible for it.”¹ Three centuries before Raphael, Brother Rufillus here proclaims as clearly as he can that every painter paints himself. The phrase may not yet have been coined but the idea was current.  
 

1. James Hall, The Self-portrait: A Cultural History (London: Thames & Hudson) 2014, p. 26