The analysis of two novels from the 1920s selected as emblematic cases – Le Monde désert by Jouve and La Mort difficile by Crevel – leads the author to point out the connections between the figuration of the subject in literature and the portrait in painting. Indeed, the survival of the portrait itself as a pictorial genre can be seen as a sign of its involvement in the enquiry of identity and subjectivity. This article describes the three main axes that organise subjectivity as a portrait: the fluctuation between stasis and movement, the relational dimension and the fictional one. The portrait becomes the ideal model of a subject conceived as the result of a creative process. Hence, painting is not to be considered a mere narrative theme but a key to the interpretation of the novels and a metaphor of the construction of the subject
