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| Wilhelm Altheim Woman at a Table in a Garden ca. 1905 drawing Städel Museum, Frankfurt |
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| Andrea Appiani the Elder Head of Jupiter 1792 drawing (study for ceiling painting) Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan |
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| Ivar Arosenius Study of Woman with Fur Collar 1898 drawing Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Sweden |
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| Armand Cambon Too Late, or, The Letter ca. 1860 oil on canvas Musée Ingres Bourdelle, Montauban |
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| Eugène Carrière Meditation 1893 lithograph Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| André Derain Head of a Woman 1923 oil on canvas Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Sweden |
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| Gisèle Freund Virginia Woolf 1938 dye transfer print Moderna Museet, Stockholm |
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| Orazio Gentileschi David with the Head of Goliath ca. 1610 oil on canvas Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino |
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| Louis Janmot Poem of the Soul 1854 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon |
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| Gerard de Jode Sappho ca. 1550 engraving Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel |
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| Lucien-Étienne Mélingue Marat 1879 oil on canvas Musée de la Révolution Française, Vizille |
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| Albert Müller Portrait of Anna 1924 woodcut Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich |
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| Victor Müller Head Study before 1871 drawing Städel Museum, Frankfurt |
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| Pontormo (Jacopo Carrucci) St John the Baptist ca. 1515 oil on panel Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon |
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| Georg Siebert Erdarbeiter 1931 oil on canvas Galerie Neue Meister (Albertinum), Dresden |
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| Anthony van Dyck The Apostle Simon ca. 1618-20 oil on panel Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden |
The earth is newly dug and on the faces of the tombstone wave the half-withered garlands of leaves. Let us decipher the letters, wayfarer, and learn whose smooth bones the stone says it covers. "Stranger, I am Aretemias, my country Cnidus. I was the wife of Euphro and I did not escape travail, but bringing forth twins, I left one child to guide my husband's steps in his old age, and I took the other with me to remind me of him."
O unhappy Anticles, and I most unhappy who have laid on the pyre my only son in the bloom of his youth! At eighteen didst thou perish, my child, and I weep and bewail my old age bereft of thee. Would I could go to the shadowy house of Hades! Nor dawn nor the rays of the swift sun are sweet to me. Unhappy Anticles, gone to thy doom, be thou healer of my mourning by taking me away from life to thee.
This is the lament of thy mother, Artemidorus, uttered over thy tomb, bewailing thy death at twelve years of age. "All the fruit of my travail hath perished in fire and ashes, it hath perished all thy miserable father's toil for thee, and it hath perished all the winsome delight of thee; for thou art gone to the land of the departed, from which there is no turning back or homecoming. Nor didst thou reach thy prime, my child, and in thy stead naught is left us but thy gravestone and dumb dust."
At eighteen, Charixenus, did thy mother dress thee in thy chlamys to offer thee, a woeful gift, to Hades. Even the very stones groaned aloud, when the young men thy mates bore thy corpse with wailing from the house. No wedding hymn, but a song of mourning did thy parents chant. Alack for the breasts that suckled thee, cheated of their guerdon, slack for the travail endured in vain! O Fate, thou evil maiden, barren thou art and hast spat to the winds a mother's love for her child. What remains but for thy companions to regret thee, for thy parents to mourn thee, and for those to whom thou wast unknown to pity when they are told of thee.
– from Book VI (Sepulchral Epigrams) of the Greek Anthology, translated and edited by W.R. Paton (1917)