Sketch For A Self Portrait

Sketch for a Self Portrait is Bernard Berenson autobiography.

Berenson was an American art historian specializing in the Renaissance. He was a major figure in pioneering art attribution and therefore establishing the market for paintings by the "Old Masters".

From the Author:

I have tried to jot down some glimpses into the chaos and to dip into that stream of consciousness we are accustomed to call self. They are few, for most whirl or flow away. And those few are handed over freed from impurities as it were, and too deodorized by our invincible and irremediable self-regard, to have more value than that of meteoric flashes in a dark sky. Self-glimpses might be the best title for this book, or better still Self-dippings, if I could endure the combination of syllables. Glimpses into Self or Dippings into Self sounds awkward and affected.