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| Hieronymus Hopfer Suleiman the Magnificent ca. 1530 engraving Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich |
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| Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen Mulei Ahmet, Princeps Africanus, Filius Regis Tunesi 1536 etching and engraving Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna |
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| Melchior Lorck Ismael, Persian Envoy to the Court of Suleiman II ca. 1557-62 etching and engraving Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich |
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| Jost Amman Turkish Soldier 1578 woodcut Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel |
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| Jacques Bellange The Magus Caspar (one of the Three Wise Men) ca. 1610 etching Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna |
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| Hendrick ter Brugghen Woman tuning a Lute ca. 1626-27 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Johannes van Swinderen An Antique Artist ca. 1628-36 oil on canvas Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Paulus Moreelse Periander, Tyrant of Corinth (one of the Seven Sages of Greece) before 1638 oil on canvas Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna |
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| Anonymous Dutch Artist Man Reading ca. 1645-55 drawing Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna |
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| Domenico Peruzzini Heads of Two Kings before 1673 drawing Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna |
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| Jean-Baptiste de Poilly after François-Alexandre Verdier Seated Philosopher ca. 1710 engraving Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
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| Franz Xaver Andreas Jungwierth Portrait of artist Jacopo Amigoni 1752 engraving Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich |
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| Giandomenico Tiepolo after Giambattista Tiepolo Head Study ca. 1772-73 etching and engraving Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden |
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| Richard Cosway Miniature Portrait of Maria Marowe, Lady Eardley 1793 watercolor on ivory Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| François-Joseph Navez Hagar and Ishmael in the Wilderness 1819 oil on canvas Amsterdam Museum |
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| Carl von Steuben Madame la marquise Adèle-Mathilde-Emmanuelle de Béthisy 1833 oil on canvas Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille |
Up to the nineteenth century, however, the patterns handed down by tradition derived some authority from those metaphysical views I have mentioned, the conviction that the artist should represent the universal rather than the particular, that he should never slavishly copy the accidents of nature but keep his eye firmly on the ideal.
It was only when this metaphysical conviction faded that the real conflict started. Artists turned against the academies and the traditional methods of teaching because they felt it was the artist's task to wrestle with the unique visual experience which can never have been prefigured and can never recur. The history of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art thus becomes, in a way, the history of the struggle against the schema. Not entirely though. Some artists always kept their heads. Degas, for instance, dismissed the excited talk of his impressionist friends with the remark that painting was a conventional art and they would better occupy their time by copying drawings by Holbein. According to Meder, it was Rousseau who first held forth in Emile in 1763 against the traditional way of teaching the elements of drawing. Emile should never be taught to copy other men's work, he should copy only nature. This is one of those programs which may be said to be charged with explosive ignorance. True, similar things had been said before of or by Lysippus and Caravaggio, but in the eighteenth century the demand had a new ring. It is the time of "original genius" and of nature worship. And so the break in tradition is heralded, which foreshadows the modern dilemma.
– E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton University Press, 1960)