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| Jacopo da Empoli (Jacopo Chimenti) Family Portrait ca. 1590 oil on panel National Museum, Warsaw |
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| Willem Pietersz Buytewech Jovial Company ca. 1622-24 oil on canvas Frick Collection, New York |
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| Cornelis de Vos Family Portrait 1631 oil on canvas Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp |
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| Jean-Antoine Watteau The Italian Comedians ca. 1715 drawing Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Louis-Léopold Boilly Woman displaying her Portrait ca. 1790 oil on canvas Dallas Museum of Art |
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| François-Xavier Fabre Portrait of the Duchesse de Feltre and her Children 1810 oil on canvas Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris |
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| Pieter Christoffel Wonder Interior with the De Bruijn de Neve family 1813 oil on panel Dordrechts Museum |
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| Gustave Adolf Hippius The Artist with his Family 1829 oil on canvas Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Eduard Ihlée Portrait of Gertrude Eggena with her Children 1850 oil on canvas Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel |
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| Gustav Wentzel Morning Atmosphere 1885 oil on canvas Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo |
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| Guglielmo Plüschow Family Portrait ca. 1890 albumen print Moderna Museet, Stockholm |
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| Jens Ferdinand Willumsen The Artist and his Family 1912 oil on canvas Moderna Museet, Stockholm |
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| Thérèse Schwartze The Artist's Housemates ca. 1915 oil on canvas Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden |
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| Arvid Fougstedt Back to Varennes 1928 watercolor on paper Moderna Museet, Stockholm |
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| Antanas Sutkus Young Pioneers 1966 gelatin silver print Moderna Museet, Stockholm |
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| Anders Kristensson The Mattsson Family outside B&W Hypermarket, Göteborg 1990 C-print Moderna Museet, Stockholm |
"We had reached the altar, the priest had spoken the introductory prayer, the young man was on the point of commencing the ceremony, when from the inner shrine the voice of the priestess of the oracle rang forth.
One who starts in grace and ends in glory, another goddess-born:
Of these I bid you have regard, O Delphi!
Leaving my temple here and cleaving Ocean's swelling tides,
To the black land of the Sun will they travel,
Where they will reap the reward of those whose lives are passed in virtue:
A crown of white on brows of black.
So spake the god, but the bystanders were completely nonplussed and quite at a loss to explain the meaning of the oracle. They each tried to extract a different interpretation from it; each understood it in a sense that matched his own wishes. As yet not one of them had discovered its real meaning, for by and large the interpretation of dreams and oracles depends on the outcome. In any case, the people of Delphi were in too much of a hurry, for they were highly excited at the prospect of this pageant for which such magnificent preparations had been made: no one took the time to investigate exactly what the oracle signified."
– Heliodorus, from The Aethiopica, or, Theagenes and Charikleia (3rd or 4th century AD), translated from Greek by J.R. Morgan (1989)