The autonomous self-portrait, a central mode of expression in western art, was a Renaissance invention. This book explores for the first time the genesis and early development of this important genre as it took place in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Joanna Woods-Marsden examines a series of self-portraits in Renaissance Italy and their relation to the social status of art and artists. She argues that these self-images represented the aspirations of their creators to change the status of art and thereby their own social standing.