Self-portrait

Murillo's Self-Portrait of around 1670 at the National Gallery in London is one of the most technically sophisticated and conceptually innovative self-portraits in seventeenth-century Spanish art — the painter presenting himself within a painted stone frame or oval, the conceit blurring the boundaries between representation and reality. According to early sources the painting was made for his children, and its unusual format — intimate rather than official, the painter apparently visible through an opening in a stone wall — gives it a quality of personal address quite different from the ceremonial self-portraits of Rubens or Van Dyck. The trompe l'oeil frame creates a spatial game in which the viewer cannot quite determine whether they are seeing the real painter or his representation, a philosophical reflection on the nature of portraiture itself that anticipates later conceptual investigations of representation and reality. The National Gallery's holding of this iconic work makes it among the most accessible of his self-portraits and one of the most studied Spanish Baroque paintings in Britain.

Murillo depicts himself in three-quarter view within a painted stone frame, creating a trompe-l'oeil effect of the painter glimpsed through an aperture. The face is rendered with warm, honest observation, and drawing instruments are included as attributes of his profession.