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.
All Articles (Alphabetical by Artist, then Title)
See how Cézanne created his masterpiece around the vast but hidden head of a girl
Cézanne’s Large Bathers (c.1906)
How others have already recognized Cézanne's late portraits as "portraits" of himself.
Cézanne’s Portrait of Geffroy (1895) and later portraits
See how Caravaggio's iconic painting makes art's basic paradigm crystal clear
Caravaggio’s David with the Head of Goliath (1610)
Don't let the belief that Caravaggio was a Realist lead you to think each of his faces has a different identity.
Caravaggio’s Faces
Caravaggio executes his painting with a sword just as he executed a man
Caravaggio’s Judith and Holofernes (c.1599)
"Mistakes" in representing reality are cues to the scene's underlying meaning
Caravaggio’s Martyrdom of St. Ursula (1609-10)
See how Caravaggio conveyed ideas about art in a simple image which Artemisia Gentilleschi then transformed into her own self-portrait
Caravaggio’s Narcissus (c.1597-9)
Learn how additions to a painting's narrative often provide access to the composition's underlying meaning
Caravaggio’s Rest on the Flight into Egypt (c.1597)
See how the "artist" as St. Sebastian watches Carlo Crivelli’s Crowning of the Virgin from the side of the altarpiece.
Carlo Crivelli’s Crowning of the Virgin
One of my first discoveries remains, for me, an object lesson in art. Perhaps for you too.
Carpaccio’s St. George and the Dragon (1502)
If a painting looks as though there are two realities, as here, the answer is often the same
Carpaccio’s Young Knight in a Landscape (1510)
An excellent example of the invisible mirror in art
Carracci’s Christ appearing to St Peter on the Appian Way (1601-02)
A long-mysterious image succumbs to interpretation if seen through a different paradigm
Carrington’s Self-portrait (c.1937-8)
See how a divine figure is posed like a sculptor and, as an artist, executes his work
Cellini’s Perseus (1545-54)
Find out how Chagall made obvious what many other artists obscured
Chagall as an Animal (20th century)
An easy-to-recognize demonstration of how artists fuse the studio and their subject into one image
Coello’s St. Louis Worshipping the Holy Family (c.1665-8)
See how the inversion of the artist-model relationship helps express the androgyny of the artist's mind
Corinth’s Self-Portrait with a Model (1903)
A sketch-like landscape print by the nineteenth-century French artist, Camille Corot, includes the ghost-like echo of his own self-portrait in the trees at right.
Corot’s La Ronde Gauloise
Find out how specialists have been on the right track too, even a contemporary.
Courbet’s Corpulent Bathers: A Postscript
Michael Fried has seen how Courbet painted himself in The Stonebreakers
Courbet’s The Stonebreakers (1849)
Michael Fried read this painting exactly as we would 20 years ago
Courbet’s The Wheat Sifters (1854-5)
See how a self-portrait viewed through a different perspective changes everything
Courbet’s The Wounded Man (1844-54)
Find out how the colloquial term for a female rider inspired an artist
Courbet’s Woman in a Riding Habit or The Amazon (1856)
Yet one more artist who sees himself as an animal, even as a creating animal
Cranach’s Animals in Adam and Eve’s (1509-1533)
What can one learn from the single fragment of a larger painting? A lot, if you look.
Cranach’s Cupid (c.1530)
Cranach saw a resemblance in someone else's work and made it his own, a common practice in poetic art
Cranach’s Form of the Body of ...Jesus (1553)
See how Cranach represents himself as an evil man executing "his painting" of spiritual perfection.
Cranach’s Martryrdom of St. Barbara
In Cranach’s 1506 woodcut of Venus and Cupid, Cupid is the artist drawing back the bow to shoot his “victim”.
Cranach’s Venus and Cupid Woodcut
St. Veronica’s veil was the cloth with which she wiped Christ’s face after his death and on which the imprint of his face was left. The cloth with its miraculous image is here held by the angel as though it is being blown by the wind.
Dürer’s Angel with the Sudarium (1516)
This woodcut by Dürer is known as Cain Killing Abel even though there is no way to know whether the scene is biblical or not. It might just as well be an ordinary scene of murder
Dürer’s Cain Killing Abel
Discover how two of Dürer's images are based on his own profile
Dürer’s Death of Orpheus (1494) and Descent into Limbo (1510)
Dürer’s woodcut of The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian provides further evidence that even religious scenes are self-referential.
Dürer’s Martyrdom of St. Sebastian
This is an example of a hidden face in rock being seen by others
Dürer’s Mountain Hut in Ruins (1494-5)
See how artists continually think on another level beyond the narrative
Dürer’s Rape of Europa and Other Studies (1494-5)
On the surface this drawing by Albrecht Durer appears to be a simple portrait of Saint Dominic.
Dürer’s St. Dominic (1506)
Learn how artists identified with other animals, even in the Renaissance.
Dürer’s St. Jerome in his Study (1514)
Find out how inconsistencies in an artist's technique can be the sign of significant meaning
Dürer’s St. Jerome in the Wilderness (1496)
See how Durer shaped the Virgin and Child into the form of his own monogram
Dürer’s Virgin and Child (c.1491)
One of the easiest ways to find unseen features in paintings is to look for the artist's initials. Daumier included them more than most.
Daumier’s Ecce Homo (c.1849-52)
An early caricature reveals the same elements as previously shown in Daumier's mature work
Daumier’s Sire, Lisbon is Taken… (1833)
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