Self-portraits - European Art - Renaissance and Baroque

Renaissance and Baroque

The great Italian painters of the Renaissance made comparatively few formal painted self-portraits, but often included themselves in larger works. Most individual self-portraits they have left were straightforward depictions; Dürer's showmanship was rarely followed, although a controversially attributed Self-portrait as David by Giorgione would have something of the same spirit, if it is a self-portrait. There is a portrait by Pietro Perugino of about 1500 (Collegio del Cambio of Perugia), and one by the young Parmigianino showing the view in a convex mirror. There is also a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci (1512)., and self-portraits in larger works by Michelangelo, who gave his face to the skin of St. Bartholomew in the Last Judgement of the Sistine Chapel (1536–1541), and Raphael who is seen in the characters of School of Athens 1510, or with a friend who holds his shoulder (1518). Also notable are two portraits of Titian as an old man in the 1560s. Paolo Veronese appears as a violinist clothed in white in his Marriage at Cana, accompanied by Titian on the bass viol (1562). Northern artists continued to make more individual portraits, often looking very much like their other bourgeois sitters. Johan Gregor van der Schardt produced a painted terracotta bust of himself (c.1573).

Titian's Allegory of Prudence (c. 1565-70) is thought to depict Titian, his son Orazio, and a young cousin, Marco Vecellio. Titian also painted a late self-portrait in 1567; apparently his first. Caravaggio painted himself in Bacchus at the beginning of his career, then appears in the staffage of some of his larger paintings. Finally, the head of Goliath held by David (1605–10, Galleria Borghese) is Caravaggio's own.

• Gentile Bellini, black chalk, 1496 or earlier, Berlin

• Nuremberg sculptor Adam Kraft, self-portrait from St Lorenz Church, 1490s.

• Probable self-portrait by Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1512-1515

• Nicholas Hilliard, self-portrait miniature, 1577