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| Rosalba Carriera Diana before 1757 pastel on paper Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden |
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| Parmigianino (Francesco Mazzola) Study of Antique Head ca. 1524-27 drawing Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence |
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| Roman Empire Bust of Caligula 1st century AD marble Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen |
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| Anonymous French Artist Ariadne 17th century engraving Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna |
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| Antonino Salamanca Andromache ca. 1540-50 etching and engraving Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich |
-Bust-of-the-Muse-Polyhymnia-c1500-porphyry-Kunsthistorisches-Museum-Vienna.jpg) |
| Serbaldi da Pescia Pier Maria (il Tagliacarne) Bust of the Muse Polyhymnia ca. 1500 porphyry Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
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| Gustaf Magnusson Antique Head of Apollo ca. 1925 drawing Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm |
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| Walter Hege Head of the Bride Deidameia West Pediment - Temple of Zeus at Olympia 1935 gelatin silver print Museum Ludwig, Cologne |
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| Philipp Jakob Becker Bust of Aesculapius 1783-84 drawing Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna |
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| Peter Paul Rubens Julius Caesar ca. 1625-26 oil on panel Leiden Collection, New York |
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| Ancient Greece Head of Victorious Boxer 330-320 BC bronze (statue fragment excavated at Olympia) National Archaeological Museum, Athens |
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| František Tkadlík Head of the Apollo Belvedere 1808 drawing Národní Galerie, Prague |
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| Pierre Philippe Bust of Athena 1662 engraving (book illustration) Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel |
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| Roman Empire Herm - Bearded Deity 1st century AD marble Galleria Borghese, Rome |
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| Johannes Laurentius Faces of the Roman Empire (Altes Museum - Gallery View) 2010 photograph Altes Museum, Berlin |
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| Charley Toorop Medusa Takes Sea 1939-41 oil on panel Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands |
"The reader will here find no regions cursed with irremediable barrenness, or blessed with spontaneous fecundity, no perpetual gloom or unceasing sunshine; nor are the nations here described either devoid of all sense of humanity or consummate in all private and social virtues. . . . He will discover, what will always be discovered by a diligent and impartial inquirer, that wherever human nature is to be found there is a mixture of vice and virtue, a contest of passion and reason, and that the Creator doth not appear partial in his distributions, but has balanced in most countries their particular inconveniences by particular favours."
– Samuel Johnson, from the preface to his English translation of A Voyage to Abyssinia. This was originally a manuscript written in the 1660s by Father Jerónimo Lobo, a Portuguese Jesuit, about a mission he had pursued in the 1630s. Lobo's text remained unpublished until translated into French and printed in 1728, the same year Samuel Johnson entered Pembroke College, Oxford – where this French version of Lobo's Voyage was one of the "new" books the young scholar quickly found and read. Thirty years later he would set his own fictional Rasselas in Abyssinia.
"In 1735, when Johnson's age was twenty-six, and the world seemed to have shut against him every door of hope, Johnson stayed for six months at Birmingham with his old schoolfellow Hector, who was aiming at medical practice, and who lodged at the house of a bookseller. Johnson spoke with interest of Father Lobo, whose book he had read at Pembroke College. Mr. Warren, the bookseller, thought it would be worthwhile to print a translation. Hector joined in urging Johnson to undertake it, for a payment of five guineas. Although nearly brought to a stop midway by hypochondriac despondency, a little suggestion that the printers also were stopped, and if they had not got their work had not their pay, caused Johnson to go on to the end. He began work as a professional writer with this translation."
– from Henry Morley's introduction to a Victorian reprint of Johnson's translation, 1887