This chapter traces and opens up the themes that recur in the series of chapters which follow. With a brief discussion of a painting mentioned by Vasari in his Lives of the Painters—Parmigianino’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1523–4)—ideas of illusion and truth-telling, the differences between visual and literary self-portraiture, and the difficulties in searching for the meaning of a life, are introduced. The scope of Portraits from Life is outlined, with brief definitions of memoir and autobiography, and a discussion of the thin line between fiction and autobiography in all writing. The key problems, satisfactions, and possibilities of biography and autobiography are raised, especially as they relate to the Modernist period and to writers who are also novelists. The way in which autobiography often becomes a form of group portraiture is also discussed.