Inside Jokes from the Masters

Apparently, the great artists used to like inserting portraits of themselves, their friends, or their enemies into their paintings. Michelangelo felt that he was being persecuted by his patrons and critics and so he painted his own face on the corpse of a martyred saint and the face of one of his critics on a character being damned to hell - both of which are in his fresco of the last judgement. I guess the equivalent today would be when Taylor Swift or Adele are jilted by a young man and get their revenge by writing a pop song telling their version of the story. Here's an image of a brooding Michelangelo that Raphael included in one of his frescoes.