EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

The idea that God is inside us and that we ourselves are God is so pervasive in Renaissance art that it needs stressing. Time and again I have shown how Titian depicts himself as Christ and God.{ref1} This canvas in Russia is less well-known than other images of Christ by Titian but maintains the same self-reference.

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A comparison to Titian's well-known self-portrait (the original now lost) makes the point as do Christ's gestures....  

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Christ's left hand, horizontal, balances the glass orb as though he might be holding a palette; the other raises two fingers in blessing as though they are a "paintbrush" about to begin the picture. Pointing and painting in art are closely linked.{ref2}

The glass orb, meanwhile, also suggests an eyeball with a window-frame reflection. The suggestion is, as in portraits with a similar reflection on the eye by Dürer, that the scene is indoors and during daylight hours even as the background suggests the opposite, that Christ is outdoors at night.{ref3} With Christ as the divine painter facing the viewer, the canvas must then be a mirror, an archetypal symbol for the mind.