LONDON, ENGLAND.-SELF PORTRAIT Renaissance to Contemporary is the first large-scale exhibition to bring artists' own images together from across periods and places within the tradition of western painting. From Jan van Eyck to Jenny Saville, visitors will enjoy many portraits rarely seen outside the collections and cities in which they are permanently displayed. The appeal of this genre of painting is well known, and this exhibition explores the diversity of the image through which the artist is represented.

Sponsored by Channel 4, this major exhibition brings together a painted self-portrait by 56 of the world's greatest artists from 1433 right up to the present day, including 14 by women painters. Works by artists renowned for their self-portraits such as Rembrandt, van Gogh, Kahlo and Bacon will be included alongside works by less well-known artists such as Pieter van Laer, Johannes Gumpp and Hans Thoma, whose self-portraits are of exceptional quality and interest. The international range of artists represented includes Carracci, Velázquez, Hogarth, Kauffmann, Courbet, Warhol, Hopper, and Freud.

Focusing on the self-portrait through oils, SELF PORTRAIT: Renaissance to Contemporary traces continuity and change in this genre over 500 years and the particular importance of the medium of oil paint to its development. It is especially concerned with the ways in which portrait likenesses can express the creativity and inventiveness of the artist. The exhibition includes seven early works from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, where the collection of self-portraits begun by the Medici - now displayed in the "Vasari corridor"- is the most important and famous group of self-portraits in the world. Other important loans come from the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, The Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Musée d'Orsay, Paris. British loans come from the Royal Collection, The National Gallery, Tate, and English Heritage.

A new large self-portrait by the American artist Chuck Close has been painted especially for the exhibition. Chuck Close will also be talking to Tim Marlow about his career at 7pm on Friday 21 October at the Gallery in the first of a series of artists talks which accompany the exhibition.

This exhibition is jointly organised by the National Portrait Gallery, London and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. It is curated by Anthony Bond, Head Curator at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and Dr Joanna Woodall of the Courtauld Institute of Art.

Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, London, says: "We are all fascinated by how artists have scrutinised themselves. By showing the different ways in which artists have chosen to paint their own image the exhibition opens up questions of consciousness, process and identity. A number of collections have been very generous in offering some extremely important loans."

A series of three minute films will be shown on Channel 4 from Monday 17 to Thursday 20 October at 7.55pm to coincide with the opening of the exhibition. Julian Opie creates an image of himself using digital cameras, laptops and animation. Martin Maloney paints himself on a massive canvas in just a few hours, and Bob & Roberta Smith create a self-portrait from scrap wood and sign writing. These short films will also be shown in the IT Gallery, in the Main Hall. Three Minute Wonder follows Channel 4's major three-part series Self Portraits: The Me Generation presented by art critic and broadcaster Matthew Collings. The BBC ONE Imagine strand will devote a programme to Chuck Close, to be shown on 30 November at 10.40pm.

To complement SELF PORTRAIT, the third exhibition in the Gallery's three-year Reaching Out Drawing In project, Look at Me runs from 24 September 2005 to 19 March 2006 in the Studio Gallery. Supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, Look at Me displays work created by young people from across the UK in a wide variety of media including painting, drawing, photography, sculpture and video.

There is also a display of self-portrait photographs in the Bookshop Gallery entitled A Question of Identity: Self-portrait Photographs 1855-2000, and a series of related talks and special events.

PUBLICATION - A fully illustrated book accompanies the exhibition with essays by Anthony Bond, Joanna Woodall, T J Clark, Ludmilla Jordanova and Joseph Leo Koerner. SELF PORTRAIT Renaissance to Contemporary will be published in October 2005, 300 x 245mm, 224 pages with 140 illustrations, price £30 (hardback).