Famous Self Portraits: 10 Artists Who Turned the Mirror on Themselves

A self portrait is the one painting where the artist cannot hide behind a client or a commission. It is just them, a mirror, and the choice of how to be seen. That is why the famous ones are so revealing. The best known self portraits in art history include Vincent van Gogh’s 1889 Self-Portrait, Frida Kahlo’s Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, Rembrandt’s lifelong series, Albrecht Durer’s Self-Portrait at Twenty-Eight, Artemisia Gentileschi’s Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting, Parmigianino’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, Norman Rockwell’s Triple Self-Portrait, and self portraits by Velazquez, Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun, and Picasso.

Each one answers the same quiet question differently: who do I want you to think I am. Here is what they painted, and what they were really saying.

Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait (1889)

Van Gogh painted around thirty self-portraits, mostly because he was too poor to pay models. The most famous, from 1889, shows him in a swirling blue green haze, his pale eyes fixed and unsettled, every brushstroke alive with the same energy that runs through The Starry Night. He painted himself this way during his time at the Saint Remy asylum, and the honesty is the point: he hides neither the tension in his face nor the storm around it. The 1889 version is held at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris.

Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940)

Roughly a third of Frida Kahlo’s paintings are self portraits, because, as she said, she was the subject she knew best. In this one she stares straight out, calm and unflinching, wearing a necklace of thorns that bites into her neck while a dead black hummingbird hangs at her throat and a monkey and a black cat watch from behind. Every element is a coded feeling about pain, freedom, and survival. It is held at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

Rembrandt, a lifetime of self portraits (1620s to 1660s)

Rembrandt painted, etched, and drew himself roughly eighty times across his life, leaving an unmatched visual diary of one human aging. Early on he is a confident young man in fine costume, experimenting with dramatic light. Near the end, in works like the Self-Portrait with Two Circles at Kenwood House in London, he faces us as a heavy, tired, bankrupt old painter, holding nothing back. No artist has ever recorded the truth of growing old with more courage.

Albrecht Durer, Self-Portrait at Twenty-Eight (1500)

Durer’s 1500 self-portrait was shocking for its time. He painted himself frontal and symmetrical, with long flowing hair and a steady gaze, in a pose normally reserved for images of Christ. He was not claiming to be holy. He was making a bold argument that the artist is a divinely gifted creator, not a mere craftsman, at a moment when painters were still treated as tradespeople. It is held at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich.

Artemisia Gentileschi, Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting (around 1638)

Artemisia Gentileschi painted herself as Painting itself, the allegorical figure traditionally used to represent the art form. The clever part is that only a woman could do it, because the allegory of Painting was always female, so a male artist could never literally become her. Caught mid stroke, sleeves pushed up, brush raised, she presents herself as the living embodiment of her craft. The oil painting is in the Royal Collection in the United Kingdom.

Parmigianino, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (around 1524)

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror is one of the most inventive self portraits ever made. The young Parmigianino painted exactly what he saw in a barber’s convex mirror, distortions and all, so his hand looms enormous in the foreground while his calm face curves away in the back. He even painted it on a specially shaped convex panel to match. It is a dazzling display of skill and a witty meditation on how mirrors, and art, bend the truth. It is held at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

Norman Rockwell, Triple Self-Portrait (1960)

Triple Self-Portrait is warm, funny, and quietly deep. Rockwell paints himself from behind, looking into a mirror, while the version of his face on his canvas is younger and more flattering than the real reflection in the glass. Pinned to the easel are reproductions of self portraits by Durer, Rembrandt, Picasso, and van Gogh, the masters he is measuring himself against. It is a gentle joke about how every artist sees themselves a little more kindly than the mirror does. It is held at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Massachusetts.

Three more worth knowing

Diego Velazquez painted one of the slyest self portraits in history by inserting himself into Las Meninas, standing at a huge canvas inside the royal scene, claiming his place beside the king. Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun, one of the most successful painters of the 1700s, painted radiant self portraits, including a famous one with her daughter and a self portrait now in the Uffizi, that present her as both a serious professional and a warm mother. And Pablo Picasso tracked his whole career through self portraits, from a realistic teenager to the stark, mask like Self-Portrait Facing Death he drew at ninety, a few months before he died.

What a self portrait asks of you

The reason these works endure is that a self portrait is an honesty test. Durer used his to make a claim, Rembrandt used his to tell the truth about time, Frida used hers to turn private pain into something she controlled. None of them simply copied a face. Each one decided what they wanted to say and then said it with their own features.

You do not need fame or a tragic story to try it. You need a mirror and the willingness to look. A self portrait is the single best way to slow your eye down and really study the structure of a face, because the model never moves and never complains. Our step by step guide to drawing a self portrait walks you through how to start. When you want to see how artists turned that same seeing on other people, our roundup of famous portrait paintings follows the tradition outward. These faces sit alongside the broader most famous paintings of all time, and you can explore the full art history and famous paintings collection to see how artists have answered the question who am I for five hundred years.

Frequently asked questions

What is the most famous self portrait?

Vincent van Gogh's self-portraits are the most famous, especially the 1889 version with the swirling blue background held at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. Frida Kahlo's self-portraits and Rembrandt's lifelong series are the other works most often named as the most famous in this tradition.

Which artist painted the most self portraits?

Rembrandt is the master of the self portrait, with roughly eighty across his life in paintings, etchings, and drawings. He used himself as a free, always available model and as an honest record of aging, painting his own face from a confident young man to a worn old one.

Why do artists paint self portraits?

Artists paint themselves for practical and personal reasons. They are the cheapest, most patient model available, which makes self portraits perfect for experiment. Beyond that, the self portrait is a place to ask who am I, to record aging, to make a statement about their role as an artist, or to process something private.

Is the Mona Lisa a self portrait?

No, though it is a popular myth. The Mona Lisa is generally accepted as a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, a Florentine merchant's wife. The idea that Leonardo painted a feminized version of himself is a fringe theory that art historians do not support.