Self portraits

The Alinari Brothers

The Gallery of Self Portraits in the Uffizi 1890

"Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter," says the artist in Oscar Wilde's Portrait of Dorian Gray to a friend. "The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself."

When an artist paints his own portrait, however, the opposite often occurs.

The Uffizi in Florence has one of the largest and most famous collection of self portraits by artists extending over a great period of time.

The above photograph illustrates how they were displayed in the nineteenth century. They are now mainly in the Vasari Corridor proper, which is lined with hundreds of artist self portraits from the Uffizi collection

One has to specially book to see the self portraits

It is regarded as an honour if an artist is asked by the Uffizi to contribute a self portrait to the collection

Can you spot the portraits in the Alinari photograph of:

Gianlorenzo Bernini c1635 (1598 - 1680);

Elisabeth-Louise Vigee-Lebrun 1790 (1755 - 1842);

Fillipino Lippi 1485 (1457 - 1504);

Diego Velazquez 1643 (1599 - 1660);

Lorenzo Lippi c1655 (1606 - 65);

Raphael (1483 - 1520);

Carlo Dolci 1674;

Andrea de Sarto (1486,- 1530) ?