The Face in the Mirror

The Face in the Mirror, dated about 1766 and held in the Art Institute of Chicago (artwork 20972), is a Suzuki Harunobu print that uses one of the most charged motifs of Edo bijin-ga: a young woman seated before a mirror, her own reflected face emerging from the polished metal disk. The design plays on the long-standing association of mirrors with self-knowledge, vanity, and impermanence, while harnessing the technical resources of nishiki-e to render the small visual paradox of a face that exists twice in the same composition. By 1766 Harunobu was working in the polychrome medium that he and his collaborators had recently helped establish. Carefully registered color blocks build up the layered robes of the woman, the small lacquered accessories on her dressing stand, and the muted ground of the room, while the mirrored face is given just enough difference from the direct view to read as a reflection rather than a duplicate portrait. The result is at once a study in the everyday rituals of Edo women's toilette and a quiet meditation on identity and surface: the print invites the viewer to compare two versions of the same beauty and to ask which is more real. The Art Institute of Chicago's online record at artic.edu under artwork 20972 documents the print as The Face in the Mirror by Suzuki Harunobu, an exemplary work in his mature Edo bijin-ga.