This paper is concerned with using mirrors to examine the markers of identity and the ways in which the self can be formed. The early modern period made regular use of the multiple meanings that the word ‘mirror’ connoted. The mirror, it is argued, ‘makes an early appearance in the vocabulary of the theologian’ where ‘it gives rise to a moral…discourse that charts out the capacity for self-examination’ and ‘develops the dialectic of essence and appearance’. The mirror’s involvement in any process of self-knowledge during this period is certainly contested, and creating links between selfhood and the mirror or its reflection should be approached with caution.  This paper will examine the complexities of the relation of the looking-glass to apparent expressions of ‘self’, such as the self-portrait, and will position these within a cultural and religious context. My argument centres on the distinction between external and internal notions of ‘self’, making a link between these and the extramission and intromission theories of vision. Beginning with the stories of Narcissus and Medusa, I will then discuss Parmigianino’s Self-Portrait and Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Marriageand I will suggest that the interplay of internal and external, often featuring the use of a mirror, is cleverly manipulated to display aspects of self, or self-exploration.  The images of these artists each, in some way, work to illustrate my central argument in which I propose to connect the distinction between internal and external, to the extramission and intromission theories of vision.

—Dr Faye Tudor, Independent scholar