Portraits Around the World

Self-portraits are particularly intriguing and revealing, works in which an artist confronts himself or herself. Although neither of these images of artists at work is a literal self-portrait, they must surely have had great personal meaning for their makers, since each represents what it meant to be a painter in a specific time and place.

The image of St. Luke, patron saint of artists, was probably made for the chapel of the painters’ guild in Brussels, possibly to commemorate Rogier van der Weyden’s appointment as City Painter. A medieval legend credits the Gospel writer and physician St. Luke with the creation of the first painting of Mary and Jesus; like the saint, Rogier and his contemporaries were still primary painters of religious images. However, a new emphasis on realistic representation was appearing in Flemish painting in the early fifteenth century, apparent not only in the detailed depiction of the throne room and the landscape outside, but in the saint’s working methods. Rather than proceeding from a preconceived idea, like a medieval artist, St. Luke is drawing from life, making a careful preparatory sketch of his sitters. The saint’s own face is highly individualized and may be based on that of Rogier himself.

Two hundred years later in the Netherlands, Rembrandt’s situation as an artist was quite different. Northern Europe had become largely Protestant, eliminating the market for altarpieces and other religious images that the Catholic Church had commissioned. However, a new and thriving merchant class had homes to furnish; painters concentrated on such subjects as landscape, still life, portraiture, and scenes from daily life. Whereas formally most paintings had been commissioned, now artists worked for the open market.
Rembrandt was in his early twenties when he painted this image of an artist before his easel in a small, bare studio. The artist holds brushes, a palette, and a mahlstick, a knobbed stick on which to prop his arm while painting. Behind him are other essential supplies—bottles of oil, more palettes on the wall, and below them a stone on which to grind pigments. Rembrandt has heightened the drama of the scene through the use of light and shadow and by the relative size and position of the artist and the panel on his easel.

Because of the tradition of images of the Madonna in Western painting, we know that St. Luke is not painting an ordinary mother and child. In what ways does Rogier tell us that they are special, and express the reverence of St. Luke for his models?

How would the Rembrandt painting be different if a sitter or model were present?

Is the artist in the Rembrandt painting trying to decide how to begin, or is he gazing at an almost completed work? Why do you think so?

Would you have preferred to be a painter in Rogier’s time or Rembrandt’s? Why?

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