Room 11
The exhibition’s last chapter is dedicated to images created by women before a mirror, to the development of the self-portrait by female painters from Sofonisba Anguissola to Frida Kahlo. The self-portrait allowed women to be both the author or creator (a supposedly male role) and the model (the conventional female role). This cunning combination of activity and passivity, of being the painter without abandoning the role of the beautiful subject was the key to the success of the female self-portrait in a patriarcal society; a society in which, furthermore, Vanity was always personified as a woman looking at herself in the mirror. Some women, however, have often portrayed themselves as male colleagues would have done – in working clothes, holding a palette and paintbrushes, and looking out at the spectator. This kind of selfportrait, which we might describe as the “masculine” type, seems to have been cultivated more regularly by female painters, perhaps because they needed to justify themselves as professionals more than men.
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- Autor:
- Sofonisba Anguissola
- Título:
- Self-Portrait Painting the Madonna, 1556
- Fecha:
- Tipo:
- Oil on canvas, 66 x 57 cm
- Medidas:
- Úbicacion:
- Muzeum Zamek w Łańcucie, Lancut
- Numero de inventario
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- Autor:
- Artemisia Gentileschi
- Título:
- Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting, c. 1638–39
- Fecha:
- Tipo:
- Oil on canvas, 98.6 x 75.2 cm
- Medidas:
- Úbicacion:
- The Royal Collection, Windsor, Inv. no.: RCIN 405551
- Numero de inventario
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- Autor:
- Angelica Kauffmann
- Título:
- Drawing, c. 1778–80
- Fecha:
- Tipo:
- Oil on canvas, 130 x 150 cm
- Medidas:
- Úbicacion:
- Royal Academy of Arts, London
- Numero de inventario
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- Autor:
- Frida Kahlo
- Título:
- Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, 1940
- Fecha:
- Tipo:
- Oil on canvas on masonite, 62.2 x 48.3 cm
- Medidas:
- Úbicacion:
- Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin (Nickolas Muray Collection)
- Numero de inventario