(in chronological order)
Albert Dürer: Self-portrait as an Ecce Homo, c.1500
Leonardo da Vinci: Self-portrait, c.1512
Rembrandt van Rijn: Self-portrait, 1659
Vincent van Gogh: Self-portrait with bandaged ear, 1889
Pablo Picasso: Self-portrait, 1901
Egon Schiele: Self-portrait, 1911
Max Beckmann: Self-portrait with glass of champagne, 1919
Frida Kahlo: The broken column (Self-portrait), 1944
Francis Bacon: Self-portrait, 1971
Jean-Michelle Basquiat: Self-portrait, 1982
1. ALBERT DÜRER: “Self-portrait as the Ecce Homo”, c.1500 - oil on panel, Munich, Alte Pinakothek
In addition of being the unquestionable genius of the German Renaissance and one of the most important artists of the whole History of Art, Albert Dürer is the first master of the self-portrait. Dürer pictured himself in numerous oils and drawings, the first of them when he was only 13 years old. After this early work he created masterpieces like the self-portrait exhibited at the Louvre, in which Durero depicted himself as a young artist, self-confident and proud, image accentuated in the famous self-portrait owned by the Prado Museum in Madrid (1498), in which the artist combines the portrait with a beautiful landscape seen through the window.
The “self-portrait as Ecce Homo” in Munich is arguably the most developed of all the self-portraits painted by Dürer. While at first glance the fact of portraying himself as Jesus Christ could be interpreted as an act of self-idolatry, the image of the Ecce Homo is the quintessential representation of the pain and the suffering. The humanity as symbol and essence of the artist.