Artist’s Mind
All true art is literally a mirror of the artist’s mind, a reflection of the artist's imagination at work. If you know that, and bear it in mind when looking at artworks, your eyes will be alert for the visual details that convey it. If not, your perception will fall victim to the everyday illusion of exterior reality, whether examining an image of the Nativity, a portrait of Napoleon or a view inside Matisse’s studio.
Some scholars have identified artistic production as the true subject of a seemingly quite different scene but such occasions are rare.{ref1} Most are so convinced that past art was designed for the patron that they look at art through the eyes of a contemporary spectator: as though through a window. They are literalists. Yet to poetic painters the canvas is never “a window” but “a mirror” and nothing is as it seems. We are not looking out, but in. Remember that, and doors will open that you never even knew were there. Take a look at these examples of how artists portray their own mind.
1. Ruvoldt, The Italian Renaissance Imagery of Inspiration (Cambridge University Press) 2004, pp. 114-5, 118
All Articles (Alphabetical by Artist, then Title)
Veiled images are hidden in even the most simple and natural-looking sketches
Degas’ Galloping Horse (n.d.)
Is Degas' Little Dancer just a dancer, a study in realism? Or is she......?
Degas’ Little Dancer Aged Fourteen (1879-81)
There is more to Degas' art than the mere copying of nature
Degas’ Rocks and Trees at Bagnoles-de-l’Ornec (1867)
See what Degas makes of a Delacroix and thus, perhaps, what you should too....
Degas’ Study of Delacroix’s Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople (c.1860)
See how the meaning behind this image changes our entire understanding of Degas' oeuvre
Degas’ Woman Drying Her Foot (1885-6)
Find out how to enter an artist's imagination with a bit of your own
Delacroix’s Arab with His Steed or Turk Leading His Horse (c. 1832-3)
When Delacroix was at last given large public rooms to decorate, he turned to Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel
Delacroix’s Justice in Palais Bourbon (1833-7)
Learn how an artist's sketches and unfinished drawings help explicate a painting
Delacroix’s Two Women at the Well (1832)
Discover the secret under Goliath's helmet then know what to look for
Donatello’s Davids and Goliaths (1410-1440’s)
Here, in a novel turn, the American artist turns a paintbrush into the oars of a scull
Eakins’ The Champion Single Sculls (1871)
Find out how Eakins' portrait of his father becomes one of himself
Eakins’ The Writing Master (1882)
Sometimes the features which have not been seen are the most obvious
El Greco’s Knight Taking an Oath (1578-80)
Watch El Greco's thought process over a series of paintings
El Greco’s Purification of the Temple (c.1570-1610)
For artists St Veronica is a very significant saint. She "painted" Christ.
El Greco’s Saint Veronica (c.1580)
See how a contemporary artist still uses the language of the great masters
Elizabeth Peyton’s Portraits (1991-)
See a concise statement in mid sixteenth-century England of how every painter paints himself
Eworth’s Mary Neville, Lady Dacre (1555-8)
See how one of England's most famous paintings is not what everyone thinks
Gainsborough’s Mr and Mrs Robert Andrews (c. 1748-9)
What you can see in a self-portrait when you think creatively. Indeed it's your job to become the painter...
Gauguin’s Self-portrait with a Palette (c.1893-4)
Find out how Gauguin's Vision after the Sermon is the Artist's
Gauguin’s Vision after the Sermon (1888)
Narrative paintings are meant to make sense. Take note of anything odd.
Ghirlandaio’s Birth of St John the Baptist (1486-90)
If you think like the artist and think inwards, all changes...
Goltzius’ Man Wearing a Tasseled Cap (1587)
How tradition in art is more often based on forms than subject matter
Goltzius’ Sleeping Danae… (1603)
Goya often used bright eye-shapes in the background to indicate that the scene itself is inside his mind.
Goya’s Eyes
Change your perspective: looking at Goya from the inside out
Goya’s Portrait of General Nicolas Guye (1810)
Think about self-referential meaning and one scene can quickly turn into another
Guercino’s St. Sebastian Succoured by Two Angels (1617)
Don't take a portrait at face value because art is never quite what it seems
Hans Memling’s Portrait of Tommaso di Folco Portinari (c. 1470)
Sent on a mission to paint a potential queen for the blood-thirsty and dangerous Henry VIII, how did Holbein "paint" himself in painting the future Queen?
Holbein’s Anne of Cleves (c.1539)
How Ingres became Napoleon and the Emperor became an artist
Ingres’ Napoleon I on His Imperial Throne (1806)
Even 20th-century art, seemingly remote from the Renaissance, maintains the same traditions
Jasper Johns’ Flag (Moratorium), (1969)
What contemporary artists like Jasper Johns does is what great artists have always done. Those that do not will not last. A century from now they will be forgotten by all but historians.
Jasper Johns’ Fool’s House (1964)
True artists make their art contemporary while remaining solidly traditional
John Sloan’s Hanging Clothes (c.1920)
The universal features of Frida Kahlo's art are what links her to the canon, not the details of her private life
Kahlo’s The Wounded Deer (1946)
How even contemporary art is heavily invested in the methods and meaning of the Old Masters
Kapoor’s Memory (2008)
Find out how specialists have seen some of these underlying themes at work in Klee's prints
Klee’s Tightrope Walker (1923)
An obvious example of how later artists can see in an artist's work what we, ordinary viewers, do not.
Larry Rivers’ Déjà vu and the Red Room: Double Portrait of Matisse (1996)
Leonardo dated this landscape drawing as though it was a realistic rendering on a particular day in 1473 though scholars are divided. Some argue that, yes, the castle on the left existed while others believe that the scene is imaginative and point out specific spatial inconsistencies to support their view.
Leonardo’s Landscape (1473)
The most crucial piece of information about the Mona Lisa missing from standard textbooks is that the proportions of the Mona Lisa’s face differ from an earlier version seen in X-rays but are similar to the artist’s own in a well-known self-portrait.
Leonardo’s Mona Lisa (c. 1503-7)
How historical accuracy was not Leonardo's purpose in a portrait
Leonardo’s Portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci (c.1474-8)
Leonardo's closely observed landscape turns into something else entirely but only if you expect it
Leonardo’s Storm Over the Alps (c.1499)
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