The History Of The Western Self-Portraits

Self-portrait is a unique and fascinating type of painting. By making themselves the subject, artists try to give the fullest expression of their aspiration or ambition about art. Self-portrait is a revealing of the artist's soul, an outstanding type of art that is inner-world-oriented. A thorough research of one artist's self-portrait is helpful to the interpretation and understanding of the artist's real inner world and his artistic ideal. The large quantity and the various styles of self-portrait make it a unique genre in the history of Western painting and at the same time make its research difficult. The present dissertation studies the self-portrait as an entity consisted of a variety of mutually influential elements such as society, culture and art and makes analytical and comparative research on self-portrait by putting it under a broader social and historical condition. Besides the analysis of those well-known artists and their self-portraits, certain obscure artists who produced special type of self-portrait are given due attention in the present dissertation as well.Chapter one focuses the relation between self-portrait and portrait, exploring the uncertain definition of self-portrait, establishing the research scope of the dissertation, tracing the etymological origin of the word "portrait" and elaborating on the three major types of portrait and self-portrait. Chapter two discusses the earliest self-portrait and expounding on the change from word signature's superiority over image signature to image signature's replacing of word signature within the temporal span from ancient times to Middle Ages. Chapter three is the most important part, studying the invention and development of autonomous self-portrait. The chapter, first of all, discusses the artists' effort, the help from the humanism writers, the praise and recognition from the royal and academic circles and observes the enhancing of painters' self-awareness, the rise of their social status and the change of their role, from craftsmen to intellectuals. Then it conducts a discussion on the large-scale manufacturing and popularization of glass mirror in the 16^th century and points out that the advent of mirror makes the making and popularization of self-portrait possible and at last helps the establishment of autonomous self-portrait as a specific type of painting in Renaissance. In the latter half of the 16^th century, as artists accomplished their pursuit of the intellectual identity, techniques and professional knowledge once again are emphasized. The present author tries to define the different types of self-portraits by providing a large number of representative examples. At the end of the chapter, female artists' self-portraits are discussed. Chapter four elaborates on the self-portrait of the 17^th and 18^th century. The chapter starts with the introduction of the first self-portrait collected, explaining how it promotes the development of self-portrait making and then goes on to discuss the development and changes happening to each type, in particular elaborating on the autobiographic self-portrait with Rembrandt as example. Chapter five illustrates the Bohemian myth that describes artists as rebels and martyrs full of muse and then investigates the types of self-portraits of the 19^th century. Chapter six explores the 20^th century self-portrait which is totally free and self-centered and concludes that the traditional self-portrait is to be denied and destroyed and self-portrait eventually becomes an artistic language and concept.