Painting within a painting  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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A painting within a painting is a painting painted in another painting. An early example is Gabrielle d'Estrées et une de ses soeurs by an unknown artist of the School of Fontainebleau, the painting within a painting is in the center top. Another example is The Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his gallery in Brussels[1] by David Teniers the Younger, in which Teniers documented the archduke's collection of paintings while he was court painter in Brussels; see gallery painting.

In the back of The Music Lesson by Johannes Vermeer can be seen a painting of the Roman Charity, consistent with his habit of putting paintings within paintings.

In Magritte's The Human Condition, the cover-up appears in the form a painting within a painting.

More examples

• L'Enseigne de Gersaint (1720) by Watteau
• Tribuna of the Uffizi (1772–8) by Johann Zoffany
• "Time smoking a picture"[2] by William Hogarth. It is a painting within a painting and breaks the fourth wall.
• Salon of 1785[3], a painting by Pietro Antonio Martini.

See also

• Story within a story
• Droste effect
• Gallery painting
• Picture-in-picture
• Metapainting
• Painting consciousness