Chapter 3 - The Artist’s Mirror

Summary

This chapter considers the early modern artist’s use of mirrors, along with other visual aids, in both art theory and artistic practice, to argue that the mirror was a critical instrument of artistic mimesis. The mirror reflection became an acknowledged method of Renaissance artistic training because it united theory with practice. This is manifest above all in the efflorescence of the self-portrait c. 1500, then identified by the instrument of its making, as a ‘portrait made by a mirror’. The chapter concludes with Velazquez’ Las Meninas as the defining early modern mirror-image, comprising both the self-portrait and the inset mirror motif.