Since the beginning of time, human beings have been fascinated by our own image, so that mirrors have ended up becoming an indispensable tool in our routines.
The artists also felt the same attraction for the mirrors, since it allowed them to make visible what was hidden from the viewer's eyes.
Without a doubt, the most remembered and characteristic example of the use of the mirror is the
Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his wife
(1434), by Jan Van Eyck, a work that has gone down in history for the brilliant use of this element.
Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife (1434), by Van Eyck, in the National Gallery, London
The painting is better known as
The Arnolfini Marriage
, a name it receives due to the theory of the famous art historian Erwin Panofsky, who argued that the painting actually represented the link between the two portrayed, and that the priest and the essential witnesses for the ceremony they appeared hidden in the mirror.
Whether or not this hypothesis is real, and it is currently being questioned, the truth is that among the characters reflected in the mirror, who would be located in the place that the viewer occupies today in front of the couple, is Jan Van Eyck himself who, not content with self-portrait, he points out his presence in an inscription on it, which serves as his signature: "Van Eyck was here."
Isn't it familiar to you that an artist includes his own self-portrait in a work?
With little effort, surely a very special painting comes to mind, one of the jewels in the Prado Museum's crown:
Las Meninas
(1656), by Velázquez.
And it is that, in this self-portrait, the Sevillian painter wins all the prizes: it is difficult to overcome an artist who dares to place himself in the composition of the royal family, and he also does it with impudence.
The position that the painter occupies in front of the spectators has enveloped this work in an aura of mystery and has made us wonder if we are not the ones represented on the canvas he is painting.
However, the reflection of the mirror at the end of the room allows us to leave doubts: the people whose appearance is being captured by Velázquez's brush are Felipe IV and Mariana de Austria.
Las Meninas, by Diego Velázquez (1656), in the Prado Museum in Madrid
The use of the mirror to portray what the viewer's eye cannot see, what would supposedly be behind his back, is a fairly common resource.
The most representative example is perhaps that of
Un bar aux Folies Bergère
(1882), Manet's last work, in which he takes this curious technique to the extreme.
Now the mirror floods everything, to the point that only the bar and the bar waitress, who seems to be looking at us attentively, are real and not a simple reflection.
And we say it seems because it is precisely the mirror that allows us to see a very different reality that otherwise would have remained invisible: the young woman, whose name was Suzon and who actually worked in that famous Parisian cabaret, faces an uninteresting conversation with a gentleman.
Un bar aux Folies Bergère (1882), by Édouard Manet, at the Courtauld Gallery in London
A door to new worlds
Beyond a resource with which to represent reality, artists find a new world in the mirror, a way of placing viewers in an uncomfortable place away from reality that forces them to make use of their perception.
The mirror represented by the Belgian artist Paul Delvaux in
Le Miroir
(1936), for example, escapes all the laws of logic, confronting two totally antagonistic figures: nudity in front of the most luxurious clothes, the interior against the exterior , etc.
And what is the meaning?
The truth is that everyone can extract their own.
On the use of mirrors in Delvaux's production, Gisèle Ollinger-Zinque writes: "The mirror has become a kind of second sight, a reflection of the hidden, of the wonderful, of the unspoken. A second vision of the world of the artist ".
Two people contemplate 'Le Miroir' (1936), by Belgian artist Paul Delvaux, at Sotheby's auction room in London in 2016. Justin Tallis (AFP / Getty)
This same use of the mirror is explained by the surrealist artist Dorothea Tanning, who in an interview with Alain Jouffroy in 1974 pointed out that her first art explored this side of the mirror (which for her is a door), while her later painting is situated on the other side, in a "perpetual vertigo" in which one door leads to another and that is an authentic invitation to go one step further, and explore the world of dreams.
Birthday
(1942), a self-portrait by the artist herself, exemplifies very well the concept of the perpetual door.
A mirror photo?
As we told you in this article, although the rise of
smartphones
has popularized selfies, the reality is that its concept is far from being a novelty.
Our popular photos in front of the mirror are no exception: some artists made use of this element as a resource in their search for appreciation and self-knowledge, copying the reflection that it returned to them in their self-portraits.
We have already seen hidden self-portraits, such as that of Van Eyck in
The Arnolfini Marriage
, but there were also artists who placed the mirror as the undisputed protagonist of their compositions.
In the
Self-portrait with a convex mirror
(1524), Parmigianino, one of the greatest exponents of Mannerist painting, makes a practically exact copy of his reflection.
In fact, the work has the same shape and proportions as the mirror that inspired its artist.
And it goes one step further: it copies the deformities resulting from the peculiar shape of the mirror, unlike most of its contemporaries who rather corrected these types of imperfections.
It was precisely its originality, together with its technical quality, that made other artists look to painting and follow in its wake.
Self-portrait with convex mirror (1524), Il Parmigianino, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Surely you have ever faced the work of MC Escher, an artist with a unique style and from whom we have already collected 14 fascinating works.
Among the many visual puzzles that characterize it, one of the most famous is
Tres espheres II
, an example of the artist's fascination with reflections.
Each of the spheres are made of a material: the one on the right is opaque, while the one on the left is transparent and offers a realistic study of its behavior in light.
But the most interesting is the central one in which, as Parmigianino did, he compresses his own deformed self-portrait, adding in this case the representation of the room in which he finds himself.
If you are also fascinated by reflections, we recommend that you visit the
Cloud Gate
, the work of the Indian-British sculptor Anish Kapoor.
Located in the heart of Chicago, in Millenium Park,
The Bean
, as it is popularly known, has become a true icon of the American city, which received more than 12.9 million visitors only in the second mid-year 2016. Kapoor himself has recognized that when he built this piece he could not even imagine to what extent the reflection it would offer would be so impressive or how, his first monumental outdoor work, it would end up becoming an icon with international fame.
Different groups of people visit Anish Kapoor's sculpture 'Cloud Gate' located in Chicago's Millennium Park, in March 2020. Kamil Krzaczynski (AFP / Getty Images)
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