Types of self-portrait

A self-portrait may be a portrait of the artist, or a portrait included in a larger work, including a group portrait. Many painters are said to have included depictions of specific individuals, including themselves, in painting figures in religious or other types of composition not intended to depict the actual persons as themselves. Often these are just faces in a crowd, often at the corner of the work, but a particular hybrid genre developed where historical scenes were depicted using a number of actual persons as models, often including the artist, giving the work a double function as portrait and history painting. Rubens and Rembrandt painted such scenesThis culminated in the seventeenth century with the work of Jan de Bray, and has been revived in recent years in photography by Cindy Sherman. Many artistic media have been used; apart from paintings, drawings and prints have been especially important.

Sometimes artists place their own image into group portraits, such as (probably) Jan van Eyck in the Arnolfini Portrait, who inspired Diego Velázquez in Las Meninas. Later group portraits of family, friends or professional groups became common.

Gallery: Inserted self-portraits

Image:Sandro Botticelli 085.jpg|Sandro Botticelli's painting of the Adoration of the Magi has an "inserted self-portrait". The position in the (right) corner, and the gaze out to the viewer, are very typical of such self-portraits. Image:Masaccio Self Portrait.jpg|Masaccio inserted self-portrait from the Brancacci Chapel frescoes (as is the Filippino Lippi), 1424-6. Image:Resurrection detail.JPG|Piero della Francesca as a sleeping soldier in his Resurrection, 1463, fresco, Sansepolcro. Image:Filippino Lippi 007.jpg|Filippino Lippi as a figure in his Martyrdom of Saint Peter, fresco, 1481-82, Brancacci Chapel , Florence. He is at the extreme right of a crowded composition.

Women painters

Women artists are notable producers of self-portraits; almost all significant women painters have left an example, from Caterina van Hemessen to the prolific Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun and Frida Kahlo. Vigée-Lebrun painted a total of 37 self-portraits, many of which were copies of earlier ones, painted for sale. Women were usually unable to train in drawing the nude, which made it difficult for them to paint large figure compositions, and portraiture was a common specialism. Until the nineteenth century, they usually showed themselves in the act of painting, or at least holding a brush and palette. More often than with men, the viewer wonders if the clothes worn were those they normally painted in.