Every Painter Paints Himself

Every painter paints himself, a saying first documented in the early Renaissance, has been mentioned by artists ever since. Both Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci used it, as Picasso did too; Lucian Freud and other contemporary artists still cite variations today. Yet despite its great significance to artists, art scholars rarely discuss the saying or its meaning. Those who do seem to have no choice but to deny it: painters don’t really paint themselves, they say, but their sensibility. But why would a phrase that meant so much to great masters, and still does to their followers, require re-phrasing to mean anything? The truth is, as this website demonstrates, it is the images of these visual artists that are veiled, not their words.

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Despite everything you have ever heard about art Every painter paints himself is the underlying principle of great art since at least the Renaissance and probably before. To artists and thinkers in the Renaissance, the human body was a microcosm of the universe and it was widely believed that the secrets of God’s creation could be found inside us. That is why both Michelangelo and Leonardo dissected corpses, breaking the law in the process. They were searching inside for the secrets of Creation and the cosmos.

Now forget almost everything you have ever been told about the visual arts. Great art is not, and has never been, a depiction of the exterior world. True artists never intended that, even if their patrons expected it. It would have been mere copying of nature. Regardless of initial appearances, all poetic art is an allegory of the artist’s own mind in the process of creation, and thus an allegory in miniature of God’s own creation. That is why ‘know yourself’ in a broader context is the motto of all mystics. Not everyone can see this, though, because as in difficult poetry, the true meaning of great art is hidden. The French painter Eugene Delacroix wrote “the eyes of many people are dull or false; they see objects literally, of the exquisite they see nothing.” Other masters have made similar remarks. If you change your perception, though, and stop imagining falsely that art is an early form of photography, the scene itself will change from a depiction of the exterior world to that of the artist’s own mind. The process is similar to how a Shakespearean play is mere entertainment for groundlings on one level while also providing, on a higher plane, an allegorical illustration of the poet’s own mind in the process of creation. Literary critics George Steiner and Elizabeth Sacks have each separately shown how. The same has been written of Dante’s Commedia.

The problem in art, going back to antiquity, is everyday vision. While we all know that words can be read on multiple levels, we do not grasp easily how sight can be too. We think that what we see is “fact” though our minds use just a tiny selection of the visual data they receive to create a scene of our own making. As humans we have much in common and thus see much alike but the differences can also be major as jurors soon discover. We each paint our own visual “reality” as a reflection of what we already know. Thus artists, learning this from each other’s art, do likewise and paint an allegorical view of their own mind with each figure as a specific alter ego. It is a traditional concept commonly accepted in literature that only the illusion of visual reality prevents us from seeing in art.

Once you know that every painter paints himself, every masterpiece of Western art has the potential to change before your eyes. Discover here some of the techniques that artists have long used to convey this and your perception of art will improve as dramatically as your enjoyment of it will also increase.

All Articles (Alphabetical by Artist, then Title)

Is this merely a scene of everyday life or something more important?

Aertsen’s Cook in front of the Stove (1559)

Unsigned paintings are not necessarily unsigned

Aertsen’s Market Scene (c.1560-65)

Sometimes objects with meaning are so prominent and so large, viewers miss them

Aertsen’s Peasants by the Hearth (1556)

Find out how contemporary artists continue and understand the same traditions

Alan Feltus’ Art

Altdorfer's scene of incest is an early example of a long tradition with very similar and surprising meaning

Altdorfer’s Lot and His Daughters (1537)

See how George Washington and other American icons resemble the artist

America’s Founding Fathers 1

What did America's Founding Fathers really look like?

America’s Founding Fathers 2

Remember a few general principles and you will find that the art of understanding art is much easier than you might magine

Andrea Del Sarto’s Madonna in Gloria (1530)

Make sure you always know an artist's real name, the one the artist actually used. It's a very useful tool for interpretation.

Andrea Del Sarto’s St John the Baptist (c.1523)

Even anonymous art can be enjoyed through EPPH's methodology

Anonymous Antiphony from Lausanne (c.1485-90)

Why would a German pacifist like Anselm Kiefer use a Nazi salute as one of his signature gestures?

Anselm Kiefer’s Everyone Stands Under His Own Dome of Heaven (1970)

An artist's creativity flowers in a pregnant metaphor

Anselm Kiefer’s From Oscar Wilde (1974)

Find out, even in the work of a little-known painter, how the executioner is the artist and the victim his painting.

Antonio Campi’s Martyrdom of St. Sebastian

If you keep an eye out for underlying shapes, you might even be able to guess the artist's name

Antonio da Fabriano’s St Jerome in His Study (1451)

Here is a good example of how borrowed form borrows meaning. In Artemisia's self-portrait as an Allegory of Painting, she thought of herself as a personification of Art...

Artemisia Gentileschi’s Allegory of Painting (c.1630)

What is the woman doing here? Executing Caravaggio!

Artemisia Gentileschi’s Jael and Sisera (1620)

To see the obvious, look past it.

Bacon’s Study for Innocent X (1962)

Learn how one scene can turn into another through visual metamorphosis

Bacon’s Two Men Working in a Field (1971)

Learn to recognize when a saint is an artist

Baldung Grien’s St. John on Patmos (1511)

See how Poussin becomes Derain in Balthus' hands

Balthus’ Portrait of André Derain (1936)

If it looks odd, there must be a reason. See Balthus horsing around.

Balthus’ The Moroccan Rider with His Horse (1935)

How to see in The Mountain what no-one else has, except artists

Balthus’ The Mountain (1937) Part 1

In a short addendum to Part 1, see how Balthus conveyed his alter ego

Balthus’ The Mountain (1937) Part 2

Learn how to deconstruct a portrait by Balthus using a few simple principles

Balthus’ The White Skirt (1937)

Bandinelli's statue in Florence, known more for its competition with Michelangelo's David than for the statue itself, has lessons in it which help explain David

Bandinelli’s Hercules and Cacus (1525-34)

An artist's identification with God was as common in the 20th century as in the Renaissance

Barlach’s The First Day (1922)

Learn how form carries meaning

Basquiat’s Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump (1982)

Basquiat: one more in a long line of artist-kings

Basquiat’s Crowns (1981-2)

How even a 22-year old understands art better than some experts

Basquiat’s Self-Portrait (1982)

Learn how contemporary artists open insights into past art

Basquiat’s Untitled (Call Girl) (1983)

A contemporary scene by an artist is not necessarily truly modern or novel

Beckmann’s Lido (1924)

Train your eyes to see eyes

Behind the Eyeball of Bellini, Titian and Parmigianino

See how Giovanni Bellini used a visual pun to pass on his meaning

Bellini’s Madonna of the Pear (c.1485)

Find out how a giant Renaissance altarpiece is all about painting

Bellini’s Pesaro Altarpiece (c. 1471/4)

Find out why artists are queens

Bellini’s Portrait of Caterina Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus (c.1500)

What to look for in a portrait beyond likeness

Bol’s Portrait of a Man Holding a White Plume (1648)

Why would a great poet just depict fruit on a platter with no other content or meaning? The answer: they wouldn't.

Bonnard’s Fruit on a Red Tablecloth (c.1943)

Bonnard’s Nude at a Mirror or The Toilette (1931)

Look for art with graphic simplicity to help improve your skills

Bonnard’s Salon des Cent (1896)

Find out how a museum visitor saw the key to this painting

Bonnard’s The Green Blouse (1919)

How Bonnard turned his creative process into a scene in modern Paris

Bonnard’s The Pushcart (c.1897)

Learn how to keep your eye open for important shapes

Bonnard’s Woman with an Umbrella (1895)

See how Bonnard presents himself as a dog

Bonnard’s Women with a Dog (1891)

See what it could look like to be inside your own mind

Bosch’s St. John in the Wilderness (1504-5)

See how the second of a pair of paintings by Bosch is also "behind the eye."

Bosch’s St. John on Patmos (1504-5)

A little knowledge of studios goes a long way to understanding art

Botticelli’s Birth of Venus (1484-6): Part One

This masterpiece, like many before and since, must have been the source of inspiration for Picasso's Cubism. As unlikely as that may sound, it all depends on what you can see in The Birth of Venus that experts never have. You'll be one of the first...

Botticelli’s Birth of Venus (1484-6): Part Two

How to find the art in Botticelli

Botticelli’s Virgin and Child with Saints…(1484-5)

Pastoral genre scenes, although invented by Boucher, abide by art's traditions

Boucher’s Pastoral landscape with a shepherd and shepherdess (c.1730)

Unless you knew that there might be a self-portrait in this Reclining Nude, you'd probably never see it.

Boucher’s Reclining Nude (1730’s)

This a reminder of how close the association was between writing and painting in the Middle Ages

Brother Rufillus’ Self-Portrait (c. 1170-1200)

How a seemingly extraneous figure can be the crux of the whole artwork

Burgkmair’s Archer in Santa Croce in Gerusalemme (1504)

See how Chardin became Mont Sainte-Victoire

Cézanne, Chardin, Mountain and Breast

Find out how even Cézanne incorporated a mystical Christian view of life into his art

Cézanne’s Five Bathers (1885-7)

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