Power of self-portrait

Read a review by Jackie Wullschlager, Jul 11, 2009 on "A Face to the Worlds" by Laura Cumming

Among the gazes which follow us round an art gallery, those from self-portraits have a "special look of looking. Even small children can tell self-portraits from portraits because of those eyes.  The look is intent, activiely seeking you out of crowd; the nearest analogy may be with life itself: paintings behaving like people".

Tintoretto’s dark-eyed stare is “ a hook so strong you cannot immediately pull away for the sense of being held in his sights... ”

17th-century Sassoferato “lean forward with extraordinary candour, open for viewing, with the immediate appeal of his camera-age pose.”, while romantic Delacrois emerges as a master of self-containment.  

1433 “Portrait of a Man” by Jab Van Eyck has been recently accepted as the first Renaissance sel-portrait.

Note Degas‘ famous rhetorical question: “We were created to look at one another, wern’t we?”.