The Art of the Self Portrait and the Artists Behind Them

Why did Jan van Eyck turn a looking glass on himself in 1433 and paint what he saw: a man in a red chaperon? What would make Jenny Saville, in 1992, make a painting of herself in the nude, exaggerated and grotesquely obese?  And who paid $12.4 million to own it last year?  Since at least the Renaissance, artists have employed the genre of self portraiture to varying effect. We will look at a short history of portraiture beginning in ancient Egypt, then turn to some notable artists who depicted themselves (and their sometimes not-so-innocent motives in doing so).