ABSTRACT
In the 1650 self-portrait commissioned by his Parisian friend and patron, Paul Fréart de Chantelou, Nicolas Poussin poses himself in front of several
stacked canvases; they reveal only a small portion of one painted surface, which shows a brilliantly lit profile bust of a woman (Figure 1.1). The remainder of this depicted canvas is masked by a superimposed painting to the right, a piece of furniture below, and the physical limit of the self-portrait to the left, a framing that also admits a cryptic pair of dis - embodied arms that reaches to embrace the evidently delighted woman. Complementing her golden hair, her burnished diadem is further and most unusually distinguished by what appears to be a seeing eye.
