Corot's La Ronde Gauloise (Landscape)

Corot, La Ronde Gauloise

Detail of right half Self-portrait detail by Corot Diagram

A sketch-like landscape print by the nineteenth-century French artist, Camille Corot, includes the ghost-like echo of his own self-portrait in the trees at right. The three-part illustration above shows the trees at right unchanged, the portion of a self-portrait and a diagram showing how the key features of the self-portrait appear in the shading of the trees.

However unlikely this may seem to conventional scholars it is not uncommon. Similar faces and self-portraits appear in landscapes by numerous artists including the earliest landscape that appears to be copied from nature, a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci. That drawing is shown on this website to include a face like this one.