The new subjectivity that comes with the modern age, apart from portraying bourgeois and courtiers, the artist claims his plot of eternity, along with the "liberality" of his craft, which was not yet considered “art”. This is how he will self-portrait in the privacy of his studio, like Rembrandt, letting us follow his biography through his wrinkles, or Velázquez, who self-portrays himself in the presence of the Kings and the Infanta, claiming honor and dignity since she did not see she was recognized. The contemporary painter will also be depicted with the model, often naked and as an updated reflection of the legend of Pygmalion.

But if humanist culture is to undergo a substantial change in the artist's conception and desire for recognition, it is not surprising that the first self-portraits of female artists appear such as Caterina van Hemessen or Sofonisba Anguissola. Cremonesa, who will be the first great modern artist and, like the Bologna Lavinia Fontana, will show us not only as a painter, but also as an instrument, proof of a refined education and self-assertion of its worth. Artemisia Gentileschi, on the other hand, represents himself not by looking at the viewer and holding a palette of paintings or brushes, but by the concentrated and determined action of painting, who knows if he reflects on a determination and character forged from of the freedom to know in the margins.

Judith Leyster smiles at the beholder with her arm resting on the back of her chair, and seems to embody Dutch self-confidence in her golden age. In the 18th century, the Enlightenment praised the exercise of motherhood as a female duty and virtue, which Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun did not want to quarrel with as a painter, and self-portrayed, lovingly, with her daughter Julie.

The palette and brushes will remain an attribute in the artistic portraits of contemporary painters inside her studios, where Frida Kahlo self-represents in a wheelchair and painting a portrait in homage to her doctor: "I paint myself because I spend so much time alone... And because I am the reason I know best." Finally, we also have an example of a painter who portrays himself with the model, adopting a representative typology that is more typical of painters, but which is likely to serve as a claim for professional equality.