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| Johann Adalbert Angermayer Still Life with Carp Head ca. 1725 oil on canvas Národní Galerie, Prague |
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| Michael Peter Ancher Conversation ca. 1905 oil on canvas (sketch) Skagens Museum, Denmark |
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| Jan van Amstel The Road to Emmaus ca. 1540 oil on panel Milwaukee Art Museum |
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| Jost Amman Portrait of Gaspard de Coligny, Seigneur de Châtillon 1573 hand-colored etching (at bottom, St Bartholomew's Day Massacre in which Coligny died) Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig |
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| Friedrich von Amerling Princess Marie Franziska von Liechtenstein 1838 oil on board Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna |
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| Wilhelm Altheim Self Portrait ca. 1900 drawing Städel Museum, Frankfurt |
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| Franz Alt National Theater in Rome 1887 watercolor on paper Belvedere Museum, Vienna |
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| Albrecht Altdorfer The Crucifixion 1518 drawing Städel Museum, Frankfurt |
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| Alessandro Algardi Decorative Surround for Arms of the Pamphili before 1654 drawing Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna |
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| Heinrich Aldegrever Hercules and the Nemean Lion 1550 drawing (print study) Städel Museum, Frankfurt |
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| Kristoffer Albrecht Untitled 1986 gelatin silver print Moderna Museet, Stockholm |
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| Pietro Francesco Alberti Interior of Art Academy ca. 1610 engraving Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Willem van Aelst Vase of Flowers ca. 1658-60 oil on canvas Galleria Nazionale di Parma |
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| Nicolas van Aelst New St Peter's, Rome, in Jubilee Year 1600 engraving (book illustration) Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel |
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| Nicolò dell'Abate Two Studies of a Young Man of Fashion before 1571 drawing Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Hans von Aachen Allegory on the Victory of Justice 1598 oil on copper Alte Pinakothek, Munich |
There is no denying, in spite (or, rather, because) of his persistent protestations to the contrary, that Suger was animated by a passionate will to self-perpetuation. To put it less academically: he was enormously vain. He requested the honor of an anniversary – not without a wistful admonition to future Cellarers not to be angry because of the additional expense for food and drink but to remember that it was he, Suger, who had increased the budget of their department – and thereby placed himself on the same footing as King Dagobert, Charles the Bald and Louis le Gros, the only persons previously thus honored. He frankly thanked God for having reserved the task of rebuilding the church to "his lifetime and labors" (or, as he puts it in another place, to "so small a man who was the successor to the nobility of such great kings and abbots"). At least thirteen of the versiculi with which he covered every available space on walls and liturgical objects mention his name; and numerous donor's portraits of him were strategically disposed on the main axis of the basilica: two in the principal entrance (one in the tympanum, the other on the doors), a third one at the foot of the Great Cross that commanded the opening arch of the new upper choir and could be seen from almost every point in the church, and one or two more in the windows adorning the central chapel of the ambulatory. When we read of Suger's huge gold-lettered inscription above the west portals ("O may it not be obscured!"), when we observe him constantly preoccupied with the memory of future generations and alarmed by the thought of "Oblivion, the jealous rival of Truth," when we hear him speak of himself as the "leader" (dux) under whose guidance the church had been enlarged and ennobled, we feel as though we listened to some of Jacob Burckhardt's evidence for "the modern form of glory," and not to the words of an abbot of the twelfth century.
Yet there is a fundamental difference between the Renaissance man's thirst for fame and Suger's colossal but, in a sense, profoundly humble vanity. The great man of the Renaissance asserted his personality centripetally, so to speak: he swallowed up the world that surrounded him until his whole environment had been absorbed by his own self. Suger asserted his personality centrifugally: he projected his ego into the world that surrounded him until his whole self had been absorbed by his environment.
– Erwin Panofsky, from Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St. Denis and its Art Treasures (1946)