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| Diego Velázquez Portrait of Infanta Margarita Teresa, later Holy Roman Empress 1654 oil on canvas Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
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| Pierfrancesco Cittadini Portrait of a Girl ca. 1650 oil on canvas Galleria Nazionale di Parma |
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| François de Troy Prince James Francis Edward Stuart, age 12 (the Old Pretender) 1700 oil on canvas Landesmuseum Hannover |
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| Jean-Baptiste Pigalle Child with Birdcage and Dead Bird 1748-49 limestone statue Bode Museum, Berlin |
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| Jean-Baptiste Greuze The Lazy Boy 1755 oil on canvas Musée Fabre, Montpellier |
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| Johann-Andreas Herrlein Carl Franz and Maria Johanna von Stein zum Altenstein 1769 oil on canvas Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel |
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| Jacques-Louis David Portrait of a Boy 1786 oil on canvas Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence |
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| Anonymous French Artist Portrait of a Boy 1811 oil on canvas Musée Carnavalet, Paris |
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| Anonymous Photographer Portrait of a Child ca. 1850-60 hand-colored salted paper print Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas |
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| Franz Eybl Girl Reading 1850 oil on canvas Belvedere Museum, Vienna |
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| Anonymous German Artist Children of the Buderus Family at Christmas 1866 oil on canvas Historisches Museum, Frankfurt |
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| Henri Fantin-Latour Portrait of Marie Yolande de Fitz-James 1867 oil on canvas Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
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| Auguste Rodin Alsatian Girl ca. 1871-78 marble Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims |
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| Anton Romako Girl picking an Apple ca. 1882 oil on canvas Belvedere Museum, Vienna |
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| Berthe Morisot Children with a Basin 1886 oil on canvas Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris |
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| Fritz von Uhde Nursery 1889 oil on canvas Hamburger Kunsthalle |
Chorus of Furies: We are many, but we will speak briefly; and you [to Orestes] will answer us in your turn, point by point. First of all, say whether you are the killer of your mother.
Orestes: I did kill her; there can be no denying that.
Chorus: That is already one of the three falls we need.
Orestes: You're boasting like that over me when I'm not yet on the floor!
Chorus: But still, you next have to say how you killed her.
Orestes: I do say it: sword in hand, by cutting her throat.
Chorus: And by whose persuasion did you do it, and on whose advice?
Orestes: The oracular words of the god here; he is my witness.
Chorus: The prophet god instructed you to kill your mother?
Orestes: And up to this point I have no fault to find with the outcome.
Chorus: Well, if the verdict nets you, you'll soon say something different!
Orestes: I have confidence in him, and my father will send aid from his tomb.
Chorus: Yes, trust in the dead, after killing your mother!
Orestes: I did so because she had the contagion of a double pollution.
Chorus: How so? Explain your meaning to the judges.
Orestes: She killed her husband and my father.
Chorus: So what? You're alive; her murder has freed her from guilt.
Orestes: But why didn't you hound her into flight while she lived?
Chorus: She wasn't of the same blood as the man she killed.
Orestes: And I am blood-kin to my mother?
Chorus: How else did she nourish you, you filthy murderer, beneath her girdle?* Do you disavow your mother's blood, the nearest and dearest to your own?
– Aeschylus, from Eumenides (458 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)
*It was believed that the embryo received nourishment through blood-vessels in the umbilical cord, whose origin was in the mother's heart or liver.