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| Jacques Blanchard Armida (from Gerusalemme Liberata by Torquato Tasso) before 1638 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes |
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| Jakob Ferdinand Voet Clelia Cesarini Colonna, Principessa di Sonnino (posing as Cleopatra) ca. 1675 oil on canvas Gemäldegalerie, Berlin |
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| Henri Fantin-Latour Homage to Delacroix (group of writers and artists paying posthumous tribute) 1864 oil on canvas Musée d'Orsay, Paris |
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| Gianlorenzo Bernini Pope Urban VIII Barberini (politician and patron of the arts) ca. 1632 oil on canvas Palazzo Barberini, Rome |
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| Thomas Gainsborough Mrs Siddons (reigning British actress of the era) 1785 oil on canvas National Gallery, London |
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| Antoine-Jean Gros Celeste Coltellini, Madame Meuricoffre (opera singer known as the Pearl of Naples) ca. 1790 oil on canvas Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky |
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| Julius Hübner Karl Friedrich Lessing, Carl Ferdinand Sohn, Theodor Hildebrandt (painters of the Düsseldorf school) 1839 oil on canvas Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin |
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| Jacques-Louis David François Devienne (composer and Conservatoire professor) ca. 1792 oil on canvas Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels |
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| Francesco Furini Ghismunda with the Heart of Guiscardo (from the Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio) ca. 1620-30 oil on canvas Palazzo Pretorio, Prato |
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| Louis-Ami Arlaud-Jurine Imaginary Portrait of Corinna (from the eponymous novel by Madame de Staël) ca. 1807 watercolor and gouache on ivory Museo Correr, Venice |
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| Anonymous French Artist Jacques Buirette (Parisian sculptor and Academician) ca. 1670-80 oil on canvas Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon |
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| Samuel de Wilde Thomas Collins (British actor, portrayed as Shakespeare's Slender) ca. 1802 oil on canvas Holburne Museum, Bath |
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| Nathaniel Hone the Elder Kitty Fisher (celebrated London courtesan) ca. 1750 oil on canvas Canterbury Museums and Galleries, Kent |
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| Giovanni Boldini Princess Marie Radziwill née Castellane (socialite and author) 1910 oil on canvas private collection |
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| Sebastiano Bombelli Maximilian Philipp Hieronymus, Herzog von Bayern-Leuchtenberg (fashion lover) 1666 oil on canvas Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden |
"The living forget the famous so quickly now," he thought, "and feel only impatience, scorn and resentment for those who didn't even have the courtesy to wait for them in order to exist and who are known to them only by name, or because of some irritating legend whose creation pre-dated them and should, therefore, be erased. The living feel increasingly at home in their role as barbarians, invaders and usurpers: 'How did the world dare to consider itself important before we were born, when, in fact, everything begins with us and everything else is mere junk, to be crushed and tossed onto the scrap heap.'"
– Javier Marías, from Berta Isla, translated by Margaret Jull Costa (Knopf, 2019)