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| Sebastiano del Piombo Portrait of a Lady ca. 1520-25 oil on panel Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, Barcelona |
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| Agnolo Bronzino Portrait of Laura Battiferri ca. 1550-55 oil on panel Palazzo Vecchio, Florence |
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| Bonifazio Veronese Portrait of a Gentleman ca. 1520-30 oil on canvas private collection |
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| Lorenzo Lotto Portrait of Giovanni Agostino della Torre and his son Niccolò ca. 1515 oil on canvas National Gallery, London |
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| Giambattista Moroni Portrait of Marco Antonio Savelli ca. 1543-47 oil on canvas Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon |
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| Bernard van Orley Portrait of Joris van Zelle 1519 oil on panel Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels |
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| Raphael Portrait of Tommaso Inghirami ca. 1510 oil on panel Palazzo Pitti, Florence |
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| Andrea del Sarto Portrait of a Young Man ca. 1517 oil on canvas National Gallery, London |
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| Parmigianino Portrait of a Man with a Book ca. 1530 oil on canvas York City Art Gallery |
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| Titian Portrait of Jacopo Sannazaro ca. 1514-18 oil on canvas Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Hans Holbein Portrait of Hermann von Wedigh III 1532 oil on panel Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Anonymous Italian Artist Portrait of Protonotary Giovanni Zulian ca. 1530-40 oil on canvas National Gallery, London |
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| Moretto da Brescia Portrait of Pietro Andrea Mattioli 1533 oil on canvas Musei di Strada Nuova, Genoa |
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| attributed to Giovanni Cariani Portrait of a Venetian Gentleman ca. 1510-15 oil on canvas National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| François Clouet Portrait of Pierre Quthe 1562 oil on panel Musée du Louvre |
"If I encounter difficulties in reading, I do not gnaw my nails over them; I leave them there, after making one or two attacks on them. If I planted myself in them, I would lose both myself and time; for I have an impulsive mind. What I do not see at the first attack, I see less by persisting. I do nothing without gaiety; continuation and too strong contention dazes, depresses, and wearies my judgment. My sight becomes confused and dispersed. I have to withdraw it and apply it again by starts, just as in order to judge the luster of scarlet fabric, they tell us to pass our eyes over it several times, catching it in various quickly renewed and repeated glimpses."
"I should certainly like to have a more perfect knowledge of things, but I do not want to buy it as dear as it costs. My intention is to pass pleasantly, and not laboriously, what life I have left. There is nothing for which I want to rack my brain, not even knowledge, however great its value."
– Michel de Montaigne, Of Books (1578-80), translated by Donald Frame (1943)