500 Self-Portraits

Five hundred self-portraits, from ancient times to the present day — the complete history of the most intimate and most revealing genre in the visual arts. Artists depicting themselves, from Dürer’s Messianic self-portrait through Rembrandt’s decades of self-scrutiny, Artemisia Gentileschi’s self-mythologising, Van Gogh’s psychological intensity, Egon Schiele’s confrontational nakedness, Frida Kahlo’s symbolic autobiography, and the contemporary artists who have pushed the genre into entirely new territory.

A complete history of how artists see themselves — and therefore of how they see, full stop. An essential art historical reference and one of the most absorbing books in Phaidon’s catalogue. Published by Phaidon.