The Self-Portrait, the Mirror & the Studio. 6

The Sinister Side of the Self-Portrait.

“Think of Da Vinci/ His ambidextrous arts

Hendrix's guitar sang/ Sweet feedback lightnin' from Mars

And in reflection We see the stars.” PFM, “Left-handed Theory” 1977. ¹

In using the word “sinister” we open up another dimension of the self-portrait, particularly the function of the hands which are, of course, reversed in the mirror. The word “sinister” comes from a Latin word meaning “left.” Since antiquity the right hand has been privileged over the left since the latter has accumulated negative associations. In the history of art “left-handedness” has been ignored to a large degree with several notable exceptions such as Leonardo’s “ambidextrous arts” immortalised in the song above.² The sinistral aspect has even been linked with love: James Hall has re-titled Parmigianino’s convex portrait Self-Portrait of My Loving and Lovely Left Hand linking it with the adage “all lovers are bound to keep their love hidden” suggested by the concealment of the signet on the artist’s ring, the whole arrangement conveying the secret love of the beautiful young painter.³ Another instance of curious hand symbolism occurs in Poussin’s Self-Portrait of 1649 (above), done for his patron Pointel in which a right-handed Poussin holds the chalk-holder in his left which has been seen as disobeying classical injunctions of not gesturing with the left.⁴ It seems reasonable to assume that Poussin was making some special point by- to use Louis Marin’s description- by the “crossing of the hands like birds’ wings, but what could it be?⁵ Behind him is a tomb done in the style of his sculptor friend François Duquesnoy, so could the foregrounding of the hands in front of a tomb allude to the mancini of Duquesnoy needed to make the tomb?

1From PFM’s album Jet Lag, 1977. There is a school of thought that left-handedness does indeed come from the stars! See for example Roger Highfield, “Earth's sinister beginning: the origins of left-handedness, “ Daily Telegraph, 6^th April, 2008 which looks at how left-handedness could have been carried by asteroids and incorporated into genetic structure!

2The only book length study of left and right in art history is James Hall’s The Sinister Side: How left-right Symbolism shaped Western Art (Oxford University Press, 2008).

3Ibid, 213.

4Hall cites Michel Faucheur’s 1657 Traité de l’action de l’orateur who insists that only the right hand should be used for gesturing, Hall, Sinister Side, 307.

5Louis Marin, “Poussin’s Self-Portraits 1649-1650” in Sublime Poussin, trans Catherine Porter, (Stanford University Press, 1995), 183-208, 190.