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| Adolphe Valette Portrait of painter Annie Barnett 1917 oil on canvas Manchester Art Gallery |
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| Kristian Zahrtmann Head of a Woman ca. 1878 oil on panel Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo |
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| Adrien Ysenbrandt Adam and Eve ca. 1520 oil on panel Kunsthalle Bremen |
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| Eduard Veith Académie ca. 1875-80 drawing Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna |
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| Adriaen van der Werff The Entombment ca. 1705 oil on canvas Liechtenstein Museum. Vienna |
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| Félix Vallotton Turkish Bath 1907 oil on canvas Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève |
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| Georges Valmier Still Life with Geometric Forms II 1920 oil on canvas Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands |
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| Anthony van Dyck Portrait of a Woman ca. 1627-32 oil on canvas Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna |
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| Yva (Else Simon) Model wearing Adornments from the Museum of Ethnology 1933 gelatin silver print Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Lucian Zabel Sinalco ca. 1928 lithograph (poster) Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Vincent van Gogh Landscape from Saint-Rémy 1889 oil on canvas Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen |
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| Diego Velázquez Portrait of a Man ca. 1623-30 oil on canvas Detroit Institute of Arts |
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| Anders Zorn Emma Zorn reading the Newspaper 1887 oil on canvas Zornmuseet, Mora, Sweden |
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| Wallerant Vaillant Portrait of Prince Rupert, Count Palatine ca. 1665 mezzotint Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich |
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| Gabriel Constant Vaucher Antique Head of Isis ca. 1780-90 drawing Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève |
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| Luigi Valadier after Anton Raphael Mengs Portrait of Johann Joachim Winckelmann ca. 1770-80 bronze Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel |
The artistic value and significance of a theory exclusively concerned with the objective dimensions of bodies contained within definable boundaries could not but depend on whether or not the representation of such objects was recognized as the essential goal of artistic activity. Its importance was bound to diminish in proportion as the artistic genius began to emphasize the subjective conception of the object in preference to the object itself. In Egyptian art, the theory of proportions meant almost everything because the subject [i.e. the viewer] meant almost nothing; it was doomed to sink into insignificance as soon as this relation was reversed. The victory of the subjective principle was prepared, we recall, by the art of the fifteenth century, which affirmed the autonomous mobility of the things represented and the autonomous visual experience of the artist as well as the beholder. When, after the "revival of classical antiquity" had spent its momentum, these first concessions to the subjective principle came to be exploited to the full, the role of the theory of human proportions as a branch of art theory was finished. The styles that may be grouped under the heading of "pictorial" subjectivism – the styles most eloquently represented by seventeenth-century Dutch painting and nineteenth-century Impressionism – could do nothing with a theory of human proportions, because for them solid objects in general, and the human figure in particular, meant little in comparison with the light and air diffused in unlimited space. The styles that may be grouped under the heading of "non-pictorial" subjectivism – pre-Baroque Mannerism and modern "Expressionism" – could do nothing with a theory of human proportions, because for them the solid objects in general, and the human figure in particular, meant something only in so far as they could be arbitrarily shortened and lengthened, twisted, and, finally, disintegrated.
In modern times, then, the theory of human proportions, abandoned by the artists and the theorists of art, was left to the scientists – except for circles fundamentally opposed to the progressive development which tended toward subjectivity. It is no accident that the mature Goethe, having abandoned the Romanticism of his youth in favor of an essentially classicistic conception of art, devoted a warm and active interest to what had been the favorite discipline of Leonardo and Dürer: "To work away at a canon of masculine and feminine proportions," he writes to J.H. Meyer, "to seek the variations out of which character arises, to examine more closely the anatomical structure, and to seek the beautiful forms that mean exterior perfection – to such difficult researches I wish you to contribute your share just as I, for my part, have made some preliminary investigations."
– Erwin Panofsky, from The History of the Theory of Human Proportions as a Reflection of the History of Styles (1921)