ABSTRACT
This chapter intends to outline how artists used mirrors as materials, technologies, and performative platforms, not only reproducing or uncannily returning their (past) image to a ‘present’ act of viewing but also prompting the positioning of the viewer within the work. In discussing how the use of the mirror in self-portraiture has led to a problematisation of the present (and its rendering in the space and time of painting), this chapter occasionally also refers to artists who may not have painted mirrors in their artworks, but whose practice is of crucial importance in the development of the self-portrait as a pervasive and increasingly immersive genre in the history of art. The chapter includes discussions of works by key artists such as Jan van Eyck, Albrecht Dürer, Parmigianino, Sofonisba Anguissola, Artemisia Gentileschi, Carlo Dolci, Rembrandt, Diego Velásquez, Johannes Vermeer, Frieda Kahlo and Michelangelo Pistoletto, among others.
