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| Simon Vouet Self Portrait ca. 1626-27 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon |
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| Jacques Stella Self Portrait ca. 1640 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon |
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| Robert Nanteuil Self Portrait 1666 pastel Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence |
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| Charles-Antoine Coypel Self Portrait 1739 pastel Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Orléans |
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| Jean-François de Troy Self Portrait ca. 1740 oil on canvas Accademia di San Luca, Rome |
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| Joseph Ducreux Self Portrait Yawning ca. 1783 oil on canvas Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| Joseph Ducreux Self Portrait (The Silence) ca. 1790-95 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Joseph Ducreux Self Portrait (The Mocker) ca. 1793 oil on canvas Musée de la Révolution française, Château de Vizille |
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| Louis-Léopold Boilly Self Portrait 1794 oil on canvas Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille |
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| Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun Self Portrait 1800 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Edgar Degas Self Portrait with Évariste de Valernes ca. 1865 oil on canvas Musée d'Orsay, Paris |
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| Odilon Redon Self Portrait 1880 oil on canvas Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille |
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| Paul Cézanne Self Portrait ca. 1885 oil on canvas Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh |
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| Gustave Caillebotte Self Portrait ca. 1889 oil on canvas Musée d'Orsay, Paris |
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| Émile Bernard Self Portrait 1901 oil on canvas Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille |
Mid-Air Mirror
When I looked across the river
to where we are sitting talking
quietly in the high white room
through the late winter afternoon
old friends found after a long time
to where we are sitting talking
quietly in the high white room
through the late winter afternoon
old friends found after a long time
what I saw from that end of time
was only the light reflected
on all the buildings facing west
the Metropolitan Tower
white and the brick cliffs glittering
high beyond the green ferry barns
and untouched day where we are now
was only the light reflected
on all the buildings facing west
the Metropolitan Tower
white and the brick cliffs glittering
high beyond the green ferry barns
and untouched day where we are now
the ferry barns have disappeared
the ferries passing back and forth
on the loom of fine river light
while we have pursued a notion
that we were learning as we turned
among the galaxies learning
we called it as we recognized
some place we were and the known light
sometimes voices of friends again
but not ourselves the dark of space
not ourselves yet the farthest light
– W.S. Merwin (1999)