Self-portrait

Antonis Mor spent his career painting kings and queens. A Netherlander, he became the portraitist of choice for the Habsburg courts and travelled to Spain, Portugal and England in the service of Philip II, fixing the guarded, watchful faces of Europe's rulers. In 1558 he turned that same cool scrutiny on himself, in what is the only self-portrait he is known to have made. He shows himself at work, brushes and palette in hand, and pins to the panel behind him a poem in Greek praising him, written by the humanist Lampsonius, a man of scholars. The gesture says plainly that a painter was both a skilled hand and a learned mind. It was a claim a court artist of his standing was keen to make, at a time when the profession was still arguing for its place among the liberal arts.