The eyes are critical to his self-appraisal and to our response. Even when disguised as a goat or a donkey, we know we are looking at the man behind the mask. Those who knew him spoke of his powerful gaze, intent and then suddenly absent. Twin portraits are common in his work, most frequently of Chagall and his wife Bella, although in the portrait here the artist’s steady stare seems to be directed at a loopy and dysmorphic alter ego. Those multiple eyes, that extraneous foot, what do they suggest? Perhaps an artist who despite his celebrity and international travels, found it hard to settle in his own mind – one foot somewhere else, eyes over the horizon? Why should we ask, why should we care, is the work itself not sufficient as a statement? Only, I think, because his mature and finished work is so replete with personal allusions, to his Judaism, his Russian origins, his adopted France, his loves, that we have an open invitation into the artist’s identity, his sense of himself. A few miles from Nice and the temple-like Musée Chagall is the village of St Paul-de-Vence where Chagall lived during his final years. Around the streets of this heavily touristed hill town this summer are large photographs showing the artist at work and walking the steep streets. And in the modest cemetery is a plain tomb decorated with pebbles laid by visitors to form chains, clusters or hearts. These shifting designs seem to hark back to the multiple visions left us by Chagall, self-portraitist and conjurer with his own appearance.