Put yourself in the picture: share your artworks about art

We’re kicking off an A to Z of Readers’ Art with the assignment A for ... Art. Painters from Velázquez to Vermeer have famously created self-referential works. Now it’s your chance

The A to Z of Readers’ Art: our new project for youThe heat is on: your best artworks about summer – in pictures

One of art’s great themes is ... art. Just as novelists have been writing about novels ever since Cervantes invented Don Quixote, artists have been depicting art itself ever since... well, perhaps you know the first example. In his famously complex masterpiece Las Meninas, the 17th-century artist Velázquez portrays himself at the easel in the act of portraying the king and queen who can be seen in a mirror. Vermeer similarly tries to represent the nature of art itself of his picture The Art of Painting.

Picasso too explores the mysteries of art in a series of paintings on the theme of The Studio (L’Atelier). This is actually a very old subject indeed. Renaissance artists often painted Saint Luke portraying the Virgin, taking it as an opportunity to record the painter’s craft.

Related: The A to Z of Readers' Art: our new project for you

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