Top 100 · Self-portrait
From Dürer to Frida Kahlo
One hundred artists to understand how the painter became his own model.
The self-portrait is at the same time image, experience and position. From the Renaissance, the rise of the mirror, the new social dignity of the artist and the circulation of portraits between Nuremberg, Florence, Venice, Antwerp and European courts favored its development. Amsterdam then made it a market and a laboratory with Rembrandt; Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Mexico, New York and London in turn, they transform it into a diary, avant-garde manifesto, questioning of the body or media construction. This ranking combines the historical importance, the scale of the series, formal invention, lasting influence and the capacity of each artist to reveal an era, a profession or an identity through their own face.
To represent oneself is to choose what the world will see: a face, a profession, a story or an invention.
Birth of a gender
Why did self-portraiture become established during the Renaissance?
Medieval artists could slip their presence into a work, but the Renaissance changed the scale of the phenomenon. More accessible mirrors, humanism, the study of physiognomy and the desire to distinguish the painter from the craftsman encourage autonomous effigy. Dürer paints himself with almost sacred ambition; Sofonisba Anguissola insists on education and the profession; Parmigianino transforms the mirror itself into a subject of virtuosity.
Functions and staging
Similarity, manifesto or autobiography?
A self-portrait never delivers an individual without mediation. Costume, pose, decor, tools, framing and expression produce a chosen identity. Velazquez claims the painter's place at court, Vigée Le Brun directs his reputation, Courbet dramatizes his temperament, Kahlo transforms physical experience into a symbol and Warhol makes his own face a reproducible image. Even frankness apparent is a construction.
Classification method
How did we rank these 100 masters?
Rank does not measure general fame, but specific contribution to self-portraiture. We favored ensembles followed, works that have become milestones, innovation in the representation of the body and face, influence on other artists and presence in major public collections. Painting, drawing and engraving dominate, while taking into account extensions photographic, serial and performative of the contemporary era.
The founding icons
Top 10 - The faces that changed art history
From Dürer to Frida Kahlo, these artists have made their own image a social, pictorial or autobiographical manifesto.
#1
Albrecht Durer
From the age of thirteen, then in the effigies of 1493, 1498 and 1500, he made his face striking proof of the artist's new intellectual status.
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#2
Rembrandt
Paintings, drawings and etchings follow his face from laughing youth to tested old age, constituting the broadest visual diary of the 17th century.
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#3
Frida Kahlo
She transforms her body, her wounds, her clothes and her Mexican belongings into frontal images where the intimate becomes a universal mythology.
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#4
Vincent van Gogh
Due to a lack of models and to experience color, he painted himself tirelessly in Paris then in Saint-Rémy, scrutinizing his mental state as much as the possibilities of the touch.
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#5
Diego Velazquez
In Les Ménines, his presence at the easel goes beyond the autonomous effigy: it questions the rank of the painter, royal power and the construction of the gaze.
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#6
Francisco Goya
From the ambitious young painter to the elderly man supported by his doctor, his self-portraits record career, illness, lucidity and independence.
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#7
Gustave Courbet
The Desperate, The Man with the Leather Belt and his workshop figures compose a theater of oneself where provocation, physical energy and realistic manifesto merge.
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#8
Jan van Eyck
The Portrait of a Man in a Red Turban, often considered his effigy, imposes a direct look and optical precision which form the basis of the modern portrait in the North.
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#9
Raphael
His calm young face, with a confident gaze and a dark silhouette, permanently fixes the ideal image of the cultured court painter and sovereignly master of his art.
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#10
Leonardo da Vinci
The famous red chalk drawing, despite the debates of identification, embodies the figure of the aging genius and the analytical power of the Leonardo gaze.
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Ranks 11 to 25 - From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment
The mirror becomes the tool of a profession on the rise, and women artists use it to assert their legitimacy in the face of institutions.
#11
Titian
In his late effigies, the gold chain, brush and free touch affirm both the social dignity of the painter and the authority of the Venetian master.
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#12
Parmigianino
The Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror transforms a display of virtuosity into a mannerist manifesto, with the enlarged hand appearing to cross the painted surface.
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#13
The Tintoretto
His self-portraits of youth then old age contrast ardent ambition with final simplicity, his face emerging from a dark and rapid material.
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#14
Sofonisba Anguissola
She shows herself painting, playing spruce or holding a book, subtly constructing the legitimacy of a woman artist in European courts.
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#15
Artemisia Gentileschi
By representing herself in the guise of the allegory of Painting, she unites person and profession in a daring image inaccessible to her male colleagues.
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#16
Judith Leyster
Smiling in front of her easel, she claims ease, invention and professional success, while showing the lively gesture that animates her genre scenes.
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#17
Peter paul rubens
His self-portraits measure with restraint the rise of the painter, diplomat and gentleman, favoring social distinction over professional demonstration.
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#18
Antoine van Dyck
Turned face, elegant hand and refined costume shape the aristocratic archetype of the court artist who would lastingly influence British portraiture.
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#19
Frans Hals
His late effigy, frank and without emphasis, seems captured in movement thanks to a discontinuous touch that makes the face breathe.
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#20
Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Palette in hand or accompanied by her daughter, she masters her own public image and reconciles grace, motherhood, fame and professional identity.
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#21
Rosalba Carriera
His pastels become more lucid with age; the last self-portrait, painted before blindness, abandons worldly seduction for a moving truth.
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#22
Angelica Kauffmann
She stages her choices between music and painting, then presents herself as a learned artist capable of navigating between portrait, history and European sociability.
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#23
Adelaide Labille-Guiard
Her monumental self-portrait with two students combines textile virtuosity, pedagogy and female solidarity at the heart of the Royal Academy.
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#24
Marie-Gabrielle Capet
A student of Labille-Guiard, she inscribes her own face in the studio and the community of women painters rather than in an isolated heroic image.
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#25
Joshua Reynolds
His self-portraits with visor hands or attributes of president of the Royal Academy orchestrate the transition from the observer to the legislator of taste.
See the collectionArtist Collections of the ArtistThe modern self
Ranks 26 to 50 - Romanticism, realism and impressionism
In the 19th century, the self-portrait left the pageantry to probe the temperament, the condition of the artist and the rapid transformations of painting.
#26
Thomas Gainsborough
His face painted with freedom retains an almost conversational mobility, far from the institutional solemnity of his rival Reynolds.
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#27
William hogarth
In The Painter and His Pug, frame, books, palette and dog compose an indirect, spiritual and resolutely bourgeois self-portrait.
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#28
George Stubbs
His rare effigy reveals behind the horse painter a methodical observer, attentive to the anatomy and scientific dignity of his profession.
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#29
Benjamin West
The American painter who became president of the Royal Academy represents himself with a sobriety which legitimizes an exceptional transatlantic trajectory.
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#30
Jacques-Louis David
Painted in prison, his self-portrait subtly reverses the distortion of his cheek and transforms political vulnerability into pictorial control.
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#31
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
From the enthusiasm of the young resident to the dignity of the elderly master, his revised effigies subsequently build a flawless career.
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#32
Eugene Delacroix
Intense gaze, dark vest and nervous face give his self-portrait a contained tension, emblematic of the romantic artist aware of his singularity.
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#33
Théodore Géricault
His brief, dark effigy favors the energy of the gaze over the pageantry, as if the speed and urgency of his career were already on the surface.
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#34
Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot
In his self-portraits, the man of the outdoors shows himself with a warm simplicity which accords the frankness of the face to that of his painting.
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#35
Honoré Daumier
His image as a painter at work, often serious and compact, emphasizes social observation rather than academic prestige.
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#36
Jean-Francois Millet
The robust face, beard and dark clothing construct the identity of a painter attached to work, the earth and voluntary austerity.
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#37
Édouard Manet
Rare in his home, the self-portrait with the easel asserts an elegant and ambiguous presence, situated between Spanish heritage and painting of modern life.
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#38
Edgar Degas
His young, precise self-portraits and then his more abrupt images demonstrate an uncompromising analysis of the face, parallel to his research on movement.
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#39
Claude Monet
Beret on his head and dense beard, he paints himself as an outdoor man whose identity merges with light and daily work.
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#40
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
His late self-portraits maintain a colorful warmth and carnal gentleness despite the illness which gradually limits his actions.
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#41
Paul Cezanne
Powerful skull, beard, hat and oblique gaze become volumes to be constructed; identity counts as much as the architecture of sensation.
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#42
Paul Gauguin
He distributes masks, halos, exotic fruits and proscribed roles, developing a personal legend that is as calculated as it is changing.
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#43
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Facing the mirror, his ironic effigy avoids pity and affirms the incisive gaze of those who observe the spectacles and the margins of Paris.
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#44
Berthe Morisot
His self-portraits combine black dress, flowers, palette and an open touch to affirm a professional practice long minimized by criticism.
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#45
Mary Cassatt
She represents herself with attentive reserve, favoring the intelligence of the gaze over the worldly image expected of an American woman in Paris.
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#46
Eva Gonzales
Her pastel self-portrait highlights the medium, concentration and elegance of an artist trained by Manet but concerned with her own voice.
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#47
Suzanne Valadon
From youth to middle age, she refuses idealization and observes her body with the same firm line as her nudes and portraits.
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#48
Paula Modersohn-Becker
Her nude self-portraits, including the revolutionary image of imagined motherhood, gave the female body unprecedented autonomy around 1900.
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#49
Käthe Kollwitz
Drawings, engravings and sculptures followed his face for decades, transforming mourning, fatigue and moral resistance into collective language.
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#50
Edvard Munch
From bohemian cigarettes to bed between clock and death, he uses his image as a laboratory of anxiety, desire, illness and time.
See the collectionArtist Collections of the ArtistCrises and metamorphoses
Ranks 51 to 75 - Expressionism, avant-gardes and Americas
Masks, distortions, autonomous color and national identities radically renew the way of showing oneself.
#51
James Ensor
Surrounded by masks, disguised as Christ or reduced to a skull, he made the self-portrait a carnival satire of the public and celebrity.
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#52
Lovis Corinth
Each birthday becomes an opportunity to evaluate one's body, one's virtuosity and, after the attack of 1911, the new fragility of perception.
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#53
Max Beckmann
Dark suit, tuxedo or musician's horn: his numerous effigies contrast a compact presence with the political chaos of his time.
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#54
Egon Schiele
Broken gestures, thinness, twists and provocative looks make one's own body a radical alphabet of desire, anxiety and identity.
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#55
Gustav Klimt
He rarely cultivated frontal self-portraits, preferring to include his figure as a worker in a blouse in photographs and workshop scenes.
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#56
Oskar Kokoschka
His nervous features and expressive hands expose the model's psychological temperament, including when he himself becomes her subject.
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#57
Ernst ludwig kirchner
The Self-portrait as a soldier, with a symbolically amputated hand, condenses the crisis of the modern artist in the face of war and the loss of creation.
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#58
Emil Nolde
His effigies in acidic colors and almost masked faces favor interior intensity over any kind resemblance.
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#59
Alexej von Jawlensky
From the personal face to serial meditative heads, he simplifies the features to the point of making the portrait an icon of color and spiritual concentration.
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#60
Wassily Kandinsky
His rare self-portraits and photographs document less an intimate series than an identity as an artist-theoretician on the threshold of abstraction.
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#61
Henri Matisse
His self-portraits confront the face with pure color, then with stripped-down drawing, without ever sacrificing presence to decorative pleasure.
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#62
Pablo Picasso
He remakes his face with each stylistic metamorphosis, from young bohemian to late mask, making the self-portrait an assessment of creation and old age.
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#63
Georges Braque
More discreet than Picasso in the staging of oneself, he leaves some effigies where the construction of the face joins his Cubist research.
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#64
Amedeo Modigliani
His only large self-portrait painted shortly before his death applies to his own face the elongation, reserve and melancholy of his models.
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#65
Chaïm Soutine
His self-portraits distort mouth, ears and posture without complacency, revealing a vulnerable presence caught in the pictorial material.
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#66
Marc Chagall
Palette, animals, double faces and memories of Vitebsk make his image a passage between workshop, love, exile and imaginary world.
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#67
Diego Rivera
From the young Parisian painter to the monumental muralist, his effigies build a public figure linked to history, work and the Mexican Revolution.
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#68
Jose Clemente Orozco
His stern face and mutilated hand appear with a frankness that prolongs the tragic tension of his political frescoes.
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#69
David Alfaro Siqueiros
Plunging angles, photographic framing and dynamic material transform his effigy into a militant image, adapted to modern public space.
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#70
Maria Izquierdo
She combines clothing, popular objects and a frontal gaze to assert a Mexican identity independent of the great male muralists.
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#71
Rosa Happiness
Short hair, sober clothing and assured presence reflect the independence won by a famous artist who herself negotiates her public image.
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#72
Alice Neel
At eighty, she painted herself naked, brush in hand, with a humor and lucidity that overturned the conventions of the female nude and old age.
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#73
Georgia O'Keeffe
She painted little of her own face, but her drawings, selected photographs and studio images contribute to an exceptional mastery of her artistic persona.
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#74
Edward Hopper
His self-portrait with felt-tip pen and dark costume shares with his urban scenes the same silence, the same distance and a light without anecdote.
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#75
Marsden Hartley
His late self-portraits combine frontality, material and regional identity, as a robust response to the years of wandering between Europe and America.
See the collectionArtist Collections of the ArtistThe face as a medium
Ranks 76 to 100 - Pop art, figuration and world views
From Warhol to Schjerfbeck, photography, series, performance and body painting expand the self-portrait far beyond resemblance.
#76
Charles Demuth
In his drawings and watercolors, his fragile and elegant image completes the precise universe of letters, objects and coded queer identity.
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#77
Stuart Davis
His face bends to the graphic rhythms, bold colors and urban vocabulary that characterize his American synthesis of cubism.
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#78
Grant Wood
Round glasses and a painter's apron make up a carefully controlled effigy, as clean and constructed as its Midwestern icons.
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#79
Norman Rockwell
Triple Self-Portrait turns mirror, canvas and ancient models into an abyss, transforming academic practice into a popular story about self-image.
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#80
Andy Warhol
Photo booth, wig, screen printing and camouflage allow him to produce an identity that is at once repeated, media-driven and always elusive.
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#81
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Skulls, black silhouettes, autobiographical words and signs make his body a place of sovereignty, vulnerability and cultural memory.
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#82
Lucian Freud
He prefers the term "reflection": mirror, flesh and fatigue serve a slow, material and merciless investigation into his own presence.
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#83
Francis Bacon
From photographs, he twists his face into triptychs where identity seems captured in a violent movement, between appearance and erasure.
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#84
David Hockney
Drawings, engravings, photocollages and screens extend direct observation of his face, his loved ones and the tools of representation for seven decades.
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#85
Jenny Saville
It enlarges, superimposes and distorts the face and flesh, renewing the self-portrait with a physical painting nourished by photography and art history.
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#86
Chuck Close
Its monumental heads, built by grid then by colored units, make its face a field of experimentation between perception, memory and system.
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#87
Gwen John
His silent self-portraits, with muted tones and contained poses, affirm an inner identity far removed from the spectacular.
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#88
Stanley Spencer
He observes her face with an almost uncomfortable proximity, connecting the domestic ordinary to the spiritual fervor of her pictorial universe.
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#89
Yayoi Kusama
Performed photographs, polka dots, mirrors and painted figures dissolve his image in an infinite environment while reinforcing an instantly recognizable signature.
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#90
Leonora Carrington
In The Dawn Horse Inn, his body, his hair and the hyena construct an initiatory self-portrait based on metamorphosis, freedom and refusal of imposed roles.
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#91
Remedios Varo
Her heroines with faces close to hers transform workshop, travel and knowledge into indirect autobiography, populated by machines and rituals.
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#92
Tamara de Lempicka
Self-portrait in green Bugatti condenses speed, luxury, independence and Art Deco geometry into a carefully crafted icon of the modern woman.
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#93
Leonor Finished
Masks, costumes, felines and changing roles make his image a sovereign stage where the artist controls desire, gender and theatricality.
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#94
Dora Maar
Photographer then painter, she multiplies reflections, shadows and fragmented faces to regain possession of an identity long reduced to Picasso's gaze.
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#95
Maria Helena Vieira da Silva
His rare self-portraits are located on the threshold of the spatial networks that characterize his work, as if the face was seeking its place in a mental architecture.
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#96
Zinaida Serebriakova
From the young woman styling her hair to the effigies of exile, she maintains a classic clarity and a joy of painting despite the ruptures in her life.
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#97
Nathalie Goncharova
Her lily self-portrait combines frontality, popular motifs and neo-primitivist color, affirming a woman's place at the heart of the Russian avant-garde.
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#98
Amrita Sher-Gil
Her numerous self-portraits, by turns worldly, dark or experimental, intensely negotiate her European, Indian and feminine identities.
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#99
Niko Pirosmani
His rare images of himself, like his entire work, favor the frontal silhouette, the dark background and a stripped-down dignity resulting from sign painting.
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#100
Helene Schjerfbeck
Its long late sequence gradually reduces the face to a few signs, making aging a radical experience of color, line and disappearance.
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Deepen self-portrait history
Public collections make it possible to compare works, techniques and strategies of representation, from the resurgent mirror to contemporary series.
Read on Alpha Reproduction
Each self-portrait answers a simple question whose answer never is: who is speaking in the image?
In Dürer, the face elevates the status of the painter; in Rembrandt, it crosses ages and roles; in Van Gogh, it becomes a field of color and knowledge; in Frida Kahlo, it brings together pain, history, desire and belonging. Elsewhere, the artist hides in a scene, borrows a costume, fragments his features or almost renounces resemblance.
Above all, these hundred journeys show that self-portraiture is not a narcissistic genre by nature. It can serve as an exercise without a model, a professional map, a diary, resistance to imposed glances or reflection on the painting itself. The mirror does not close the artist on his person: it opens a relationship with the spectator, who recognizes in this singular face time, the shared body and uncertainty.
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