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  By Kathleen Hay

One of the world’s oldest photographic portraits is that of Philadelphian metallurgist and chemist, Robert Cornelius – taken byRobert Cornelius. The silver plate image, captured in 1839 on the heels of Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre’s invention of photography, is the first ever Daguerreotype self-portrait, and is one of the first documented photographs of a human being. 

Though Cornelius’ photographic endeavors were not that of an artist, but of a professional studio portraitist, his self-portrait heralded a revolutionary era of artistic expression. However, the genre of self-portraiture is as old as the first renderings on cave walls, preceding Daguerre’s invention by centuries.

It was the fifteenth century period of the Renaissance that witnessed an increasing prevalence of the self-portrait – an abundant subject demonstrative of many artists’ paintings and drawings of the time through their see...

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