The mirror in art: That reflection that watches us
Imagine a silent room, bathed in a golden light filtering through the stained glass of a Flemish church. At its center, a couple holds hands, dressed in rich fabrics that seem almost tangible. Behind them, hanging on the wall, a small convex mirror captures the entire space—and there, as if by magic, you make out two additional figures, one of which might well be the painter himself. This is not a scene from a novel, but The Arnolfini Portrait, painted by Jan van Eyck in 1434. That mirror, barely larger than a palm, is no mere accessory: it is a revolution. It shatters the boundary between the painting and the viewer, between reality and its representation. From that day on, art never looked at the world the same way again.
Par Artedusa
••8 min de lecture
The mirror is not just an object. It is an accomplice, a traitor, a philosopher. It has deceived kings, revealed souls, defied the laws of perspective. It has been, by turns, a symbol of vanity, an instrument of power, and a gateway to the unconscious. And if we listened closely, we might almost hear the echoes of the conversations it has overheard—those of artists who, for six centuries, have played with its reflections as one plays with fire.
When the mirror became a witness
Bruges, 1434. Jan van Eyck, official painter to the Duke of Burgundy, completes what will become one of the most enigmatic works in the history of art. The Arnolfini Portrait is not merely a wedding painting. It is a document, a performance, an optical riddle. The convex mirror hanging on the back wall is no accident: it reflects two additional figures, one of whom wears a red headdress strikingly similar to the artist’s own. The signature, placed above it like a banner—"Johannes de Eyck fuit hic 1434" ("Jan van Eyck was here")—suggests the painter presents himself as a witness to the scene.
But what exactly do we see in that mirror? An empty room? Van Eyck’s studio? Or, as art historian Erwin Panofsky proposed, proof that this painting is a marriage contract, with the mirror acting as a silent notary? X-rays have revealed that the mirror was added later, as if van Eyck, mid-creation, had a sudden revelation: what if painting could not only represent the world, but also reflect it, distort it, question it?
That small disc of glass and metal would change art forever. Before van Eyck, mirrors in painting were symbols—vanity, truth, purity. With him, they became tools. Tools to deceive the eye, to play with space, to invite the viewer to doubt what they see.
The illusionist and the king: when Velázquez defied perspective
Madrid, 1656. In the royal palace’s studio, Diego Velázquez has been working for months on a monumental canvas. Around him, the Infanta Margarita Teresa, her maids, a dog, a dwarf—even another dog. But what strikes the viewer is what happens in the background: a mirror reflects the royal couple, Philip IV and his wife. Or is it a painting? No one really knows. Las Meninas is an enigma, an optical puzzle where every element seems to defy the laws of perspective.
Velázquez, dressed as a nobleman with the red cross of the Order of Santiago on his chest (added after his death, it is said), holds his palette and brush as if he were painting you, the viewer. The mirror in the back does not reflect what the artist sees, but what the king sees—who stands exactly where you stand. You are both the subject and the observer, the model and the voyeur. The painting becomes a game of intersecting gazes, a chess match where every piece changes position depending on the angle from which it is viewed.
Why did Velázquez blur the lines so thoroughly? Perhaps to remind us that painting is mere illusion, that power itself is a construct, and that the true subject of art is the act of looking. Here, the mirror is no longer a simple reflection: it is a thinking machine.
Manet and the bar of lost illusions
Paris, 1882. Édouard Manet completes his last great canvas, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. A young woman, Suzon, a waitress at the famous cabaret, stands behind a counter laden with bottles and fruit. Behind her, a vast mirror reflects the room—but something is off. Suzon’s reflection does not match her actual position. The customer she appears to serve in the mirror does not appear in the main scene. As if two realities coexist without ever meeting.
Manet, ill and weakened, paints this work as a farewell. But it is also a provocation. At a time when photography began to capture reality with surgical precision, he chose to distort it. The mirror at the Folies-Bergère is not a faithful reflection: it is a lie, a metaphor for modernity, where appearances are always deceptive.
Look closely at Suzon’s face. She seems absent, almost melancholic. Some have seen in it a critique of women’s condition in Haussmann’s Paris, condemned to smile to survive. Others, a reflection on urban alienation. But one thing is certain: this broken mirror no longer reflects anything. It shows only fragments, shards of life that never quite come together.
The mirror as a door to the unconscious
If the mirror first served to deceive the eye, the Surrealists turned it into a gateway to the invisible. In 1937, René Magritte painted Not to Be Reproduced: a man looks at himself in a mirror, but instead of seeing his face, he sees his back. The reflection refuses to obey the laws of logic. It is an image that induces vertigo, as if the mirror had suddenly gained access to what we hide even from ourselves.
For the Surrealists, the mirror was no longer an object, but a state of mind. It reflected our desires, our fears, our doubles. In The Son of Man (1964), Magritte places an apple in front of a man’s face—as if the fruit were truer than his own reflection. Here, the mirror becomes a screen onto which our obsessions are projected.
Later, artists like Yayoi Kusama would push the idea even further. Her Infinity Mirror Rooms transform the viewer into an integral part of the work. You enter a room lined with mirrors, and suddenly, you are just one point among thousands, lost in an infinite universe. The mirror is no longer a tool of vanity, but an instrument for dissolving the ego.
Mirrors that lie: anamorphosis and games of power
In the seventeenth century, mirrors were not only for reflecting—they were also for concealing. Baroque artists, masters of illusion, used distorting mirrors to create anamorphoses—images that only make sense from a certain angle. In Holbein’s The Ambassadors (1533), a strange shape in the foreground reveals itself to be a skull when viewed through a cylindrical mirror. Death, invisible to the naked eye, hides in plain sight.
Kings, too, understood the power of mirrors. When Louis XIV built the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, it was not merely to dazzle his visitors. It was to dominate them. The 357 mirrors lining the walls did not just reflect light—they reflected absolute power. The king, strolling through this gallery, saw himself multiplied endlessly. He was no longer a man, but a deity.
Even today, mirrors remain instruments of power. In museums, one-way mirrors allow visitors to be surveilled without their knowledge. In contemporary art, artists like Dan Graham use mirrors to create spaces where the viewer becomes both actor and voyeur. The mirror, once a symbol of truth, has become a tool of control.
What the mirror does not reflect
Yet the mirror has its limits. It shows only what is visible. It does not reflect thoughts, memories, regrets. Perhaps that is why some artists have chosen to break it, veil it, or subvert it.
In The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), Damien Hirst places a shark in formaldehyde between two reflective vitrines. The mirror does not reflect death—it stages it, as if to better remind us that some things elude all representation.
Other artists have chosen to play with absence. In Untitled (After Walker Evans) (1981), Sherrie Levine photographs Walker Evans’ photographs, as if to say: the mirror never reflects anything but copies of copies. The original has long since disappeared.
What if the mirror’s true mystery lies precisely in what it does not show? Those shadowy zones where our deepest truths hide?
The mirror and you: a story that is not over
Today, mirrors are everywhere. In our smartphones, which return a distorted image of ourselves. In our computer screens, which turn us into spectators of our own lives. In museums, where works like Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room invite us to lose ourselves in endless reflections.
But the mirror itself has not changed. It remains that threshold between the visible and the invisible, between reality and its double. It reminds us that art is never anything but a reflection—sometimes faithful, often deceptive, always fascinating.
So the next time you catch your reflection in a window or a studio mirror, ask yourself: who is really watching whom? And what if you were the true subject of the painting?