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Monday, December 21, 2015


Selfies and self- portrait are a different entity. They have similar qualities like both are usually composed to show the image we want to project to the public. Anyone who says that selfies are not totally composed doesn’t know how long it took for those selfies- enthusiasts to put those “make-up that don’t look like make-up”, getting the right pose to highlight the best angle, and choosing the perfect filter just to post “Look, I just woke up, LOL!” Selfies and self-portrait both heavily emphasize the viewer’s response to the image. The main difference between selfies and self-portrait is that self-portraits have monetary value while selfies are just to get “likes”.

Here are some the Self-portraits of the Greatest Master Painters.




Michelangelo just like other artists during the Renaissance period, traditionally painted a self portrait of themselves hidden in the background of their paintings. A self-portrait by him has been discovered in his painting, the Crucifixion of Saint Peter in the Vatican's Pauline Chapel. During a major restoration, in 2004, of the Crucifixion of Saint Peter and the other Michelangelo fresco in the chapel, the Vatican concluded that the figure in the top left-hand corner is Michaelangelo. The figure identified as the artist is one of three horsemen in the picture. Michelangelo is depicted wearing a blue turban of lapis lazuli blue.

The only other self-portrait of Michelangelo appears in his most famous work, the monumental Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo painted his self portrait as the grotesque flayed skin of a man held by Saint Bartholomew.


This self-portrait when he was 50 and living in France. Leonardo da Vinci's cast himself as a venerable old man with a long white beard, the traditional style for representing God, prophets and philosophers. There's a great myth in Turin that the chalk drawing has a mystical power. The belief that Leonardo da Vinci's self-portrait is so intense that those who observe it are imbued with great strength. The Italians believed the mythology so much that they secretly hid the drawing during the second world war to prevent the Nazi from taking it.


The controversial Self-Portrait in the Uffizi is very similar to the Blessing Christ, but its poor state of conservation has prevented critics from attributing it objectively and definitively to Raphael.

At the edge of the frescoes Raphael depicted himself and painter Sodom, who began work before him. Their postures express bright individuality, naturally consistent with the strict symmetry of the composition. Figures of people formed several picturesque groups, and Rafael has not had so carefully follow the chain of command in their location, as it was with the Fathers and theologians in the "Dispute". Each group of figures - a sample of the majestic harmony and elegant coordinated movement.


Filippino Lippi painted himself as one of the crowd in "The Dispute with Simon Magnus" one of the frescos in the Brancacci Chapel in Florence


Bernini painted this self-portrait when he was 25 years old when he sculpted David, Apollo and Daphne.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini painted a large number of self-portraits. He has the record of having the largest number of self-portraits among Italian 17th-century artists. In Europe he is second to Rembrandt in numbers.
Bernini tried to capture his profile transformation as he changed thru the years.


First self portrait known of (now in a private collection in Madrid) was painted after his return from Italy. 

This is a one of Goya's self-portrait that was included in the preparatory sketches for "CAPRICHOS". 

One of the numerous self-portraits that Goya made during the course of his life, this painting, made when he was 69 years old, is perhaps the most intimate, with the exception of the likeness on his sick bed, frail and suffering, made five years later.


Rembrandt created an autobiography through his self-portrait. There are more than 90 known Rembrandt's self-portrait. It wasn't until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when scholars studied Rembrandt's oeuvre as a whole, that it was discovered how very many times the artist had portrayed himself. The number is    still a matter of contention, but it seems he depicted himself in approximately forty to fifty extant paintings, about thirty-two etchings, and seven drawings. It is an output unique in history; most artists produce only a handful of self-portraits, if that. And why Rembrandt did this is one of the great mysteries of art history. Most scholars up till about twenty years ago interpreted Rembrandt's remarkable series of self-portraits as a sort of visual diary, a forty-year exercise in self-examination.
Historians thinks that Rembrandt's self-portraits were means of profound self-reflection.

Rembrandt may have used his own face because the model was cheap, but perhaps he was killing two birds with one stone. By using himself as the model for these and other studies, Rembrandt was making himself into a recognizable celebrity at the same time that he gave the public strikingly original and expressive art.


At the start of his career, Degas produced some forty self-portraits in various media. The above self-portrait was painted dated 1855–56, when the young artist quit his formal training at the École des Beaux-Arts and set off for an extended sojourn in Italy. It reflects Degas's influence from the self-portraiture of Rembrandt.




Self-Portrait With A Palette is one of just two existing works that Edouard Manet, the father of Impressionism, painted of himself. The image was painted in 1878, when Manet, who mentored a whole generation of artists including Monet and Renoir.


When Renoir made this self-portrait in 1875, his paintings were bringing in little income. The artist presents himself with unkempt hair and beard, yet smartly dressed in a striped shirt and dark blue necktie. The textured paint—almost transparent in some places, thickly applied in others—suggests he was experimenting with technique. 


Self–portraiture constituted a significant element of Gauguin's production, particularly in 1888 and 1889. Gauguin's interest was prompted in part by Vincent van Gogh's 1888 portrait series including  which Gauguin knew from his correspondence with Van Gogh and his brother Theo. In addition, Van Gogh hoped to establish an artists' colony in the south that could be analogous to Gauguin's circle in Brittany and proposed an exchange of self–portraits. Gauguin's only known statements about his self–portraiture concern a work similar to the National Gallery Self–Portrait
and thus have relevance. Gauguin refers to "the face of an outlaw . . . with an inner nobility and gentleness," a face that is "symbol of the contemporary impressionist painter" and "a portrait of all wretched victims of society."


Henri Matisse" painted only few self-portraits proper, and this is counted among the most remarkable of them. Its direct, almost confrontational feel makes it unusual. The artist portrayed himself at close range, directing a firm and confident gaze towards the spectators. No attributes speak of his profession as an artist; he is dressed in a simple, striped jersey commonly used by the fishermen of the era.



Picasso's self-portraits are so important in his work that they deserve their own category. This section of paintings spans his entire career, although for most of the post-Cubist work, his identity in his paintings was symbolized by "The Painter", or the "Minotaur" rather than a literal representation of himself. Picasso's manner of self-depiction changed, of course, to match with his current style of painting. Throughout his long career he painted various likenesses of himself that reveal his progress in life and art.




This double self-portrait is one of Kahlo's most recognized works, and is symbolic of the artist's pain during her divorce from Rivera and the subsequent transitioning of her constructed identity. On the right, the artist is shown in modern European attire, wearing the costume she donned prior to her marriage to Rivera. Throughout their marriage, given Rivera's strong nationalism, Kahlo  began to explore traditional Mexican costume, which she wears in the portrait on the left. It is the Mexican Kahlo that holds a locket with an image of Rivera. The stormy sky in the background, and the artist's bleeding heart - a fundamental symbol of Catholicism and also symbolic of Aztec ritual sacrifice - accentuate Kahlo's personal tribulation and physical pain. Symbolic elements frequently possess multiple layers of meaning in Kahlo's pictures; the recurrent theme of blood represents both metaphysical and physical suffering, gesturing also to the artist's ambivalent attitude toward accepted notions of womanhood and fertility.

Frida Kahlo, Mexico's greatest female artist, painted brutally honest self portraits that reveal her psychological response to adversity.

Here are some of my selfies and none of them worth anything. The first one was shot to take advantage of the lighting set up that was used from a project so I could have a nice profile pic. The other one was taken while drunk and bored and the last one was taken for hook-up apps. None of them have monetary value.



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