Self-portrait

Lucas van Leyden's Self-Portrait is one of very few known images of the Leiden master himself, and its existence reflects the growing importance of the artist's individual identity in early sixteenth-century northern Europe. The humanist concept of the artist as creative genius rather than craftsman encouraged self-portraiture as a demonstration of artistic self-consciousness. Van Leyden's self-representation participates in a tradition that Dürer had most influentially established in German and Flemish art, asserting artistic identity through precise self-observation and the mastery of the very techniques being demonstrated.

The self-portrait reveals Lucas's characteristic sharpness of observation turned upon himself. The direct gaze and precise rendering of features demonstrate the same penetrating eye evident in his graphic work.