ABSTRACT
Portraiture and self-portraiture is a genre with a particularly pertinent role to play in any study concerned with the notion of 'afterlives', as the portrait painter or writer might be said to aim, by means of representation. The chapter explores how Denis Diderot's writing of and about his portraits evokes the self-portraits offered by Michel de Montaigne in the Essais, and so, how in attempting to shape his own afterlife, Diderot draws on and gives new shape to Montaigne's. Diderot's commentary on the Vanloo portrait is remarkable for the multiplicity of points of view he adopts on the representation of himself. He begins with the single word 'Moi', a monosyllable isolated by a full stop, suggesting perhaps the shock of self-recognition. Diderot's descriptions of his portraits thus transpose into the indicative the two conditional self-portraits of Montaigne, the one in which he was dressed to impress and the other not dressed at all.
