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| Hendrick Goltzius Susanna and the Elders 1615 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Frans Francken the Younger Solomon receiving the Queen of Sheba ca. 1620-29 oil on panel Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| Anonymous Flemish painter after Caravaggio Taking of Christ ca. 1620 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Peter Paul Rubens Head of Cyrus brought to Queen Tomyris 1622-23 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Domenico Fetti The Good Samaritan ca. 1622 oil on panel Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Francesco Cairo Herodias with the Head of St John the Baptist ca. 1625-30 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
"The Renaissance represents a reappraisal of all things classic: rectilinear forms, symmetry, order, proportion, and harmony. It is a quest for a stylized beauty, balance, and moderation. The Baroque evolves out of this Renaissance culture and opposes it. If the Renaissance tends toward what is hailed as "natural" in terms of order, proportion and reason, the Baroque will cultivate what is deemed to be "artificial," that is all that goes against a reasoned, balanced, and orderly representation of nature and the world. This is an aesthetic of distortion, deception, complexity, and over-elaboration. The European Baroque is a syncretic cancellation of the Renaissance promises, on one hand, and the atrocious realities of war, misery, and power, on the other. Religious wars, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the Thirty Years War, economic crisis and other ills and plagues form its historical backdrop. It is a response to emptiness and disenchantment."
– Harry Vélez Quiñones, University of Puget Sound (lecture notes, 2002)
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| Willem Cornelisz Duyster Soldiers dividing Booty in a Barn ca. 1630 oil on panel Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Simone Cantarini Risen Christ ca. 1644-48 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Ferdinand Bol Judah and Tamar 1644 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Eustache Le Sueur Camma offers the poisoned wedding cup to Synorix in the Temple of Diana ca. 1644 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Carel Fabritius Mercury and Aglauros ca. 1645-46 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
At last she sate hir in the doore, and leanèd to a post,
To let the God from entring in. To whom now having lost
Much talke and gentle wordes in vayne, she said: Sir leave I pray
For hence I will not (be you sure) onlesse you go away.
I take thee at thy word (quoth he) and therewithall he pusht
His rod against the barrèd doore, and wide it open rusht.
She making proffer for to rise, did feele so great a waight
Through all hir limmes, that for hir life she could not stretch hir straight.
She strove to set hirself upright: but striving booted not,
Hir hamstrings and hir knees were stiffe, a chilling colde had got
In at hir nayles, through all hir limmes, and eke hir veynes began
For want of bloud and lively heate, to waxe both pale and wan.
And as the freting Fistula forgrowne and past all cure
Runnes in the flesh from place to place, and makes the sound and pure
As bad or worser than the rest: even so the cold of death,
Strake to hir heart, and closde hir veines, and lastly stopt hir breath:
She made no profer for to speake, and though she had done so,
It had bene vaine. For way was none for language forth to go.
Hir throte congealed into stone: hir mouth became hard stone,
And like an image sate she still, hir bloud was clearely gone.
The which the venim of hir heart so fowly did infect,
That ever after all the stone with freckled spots was spect.
When Mercurie had punisht thus Aglauros spightfull tung
And cancred heart immediatly from Pallas towne he flung.
– from book two of Ovid's Metamorphoses, translated by Arthur Golding (1567)
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| Jacob Jordaens Flight into Egypt 1647 oil on canvas Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| Gabriel Metsu Usurer with a Tearful Woman 1654 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Luca Giordano Venus giving Arms to Aeneas ca. 1680-82 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |