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| Eglon van der Neer Woman drawing a bust-statuette ca. 1665 oil on panel Wallace Collection, London |
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| Jan-Baptist Xavery Miniature bust of Lucretia 1734 ivory Rijksmuseum |
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| Jean-Antoine Houdon Bust of a child 1791 plaster Louvre |
"In the heart of the Saint Marcel quarter, where I lived for a long time, I saw many children with charming faces. By the age of twelve or thirteen their eyes full of sweetness had turned calculating and intense, their pleasing little mouths had become oddly contorted, their rounded necks swollen with muscles, their ample cheeks marred by coarse bumps. They'd taken on the physiognomy of the market and the exchange. Driven to anger, insult, combat, cries, and humiliation in their pursuit of money, they'd acquired an air of sordid calculation, impudence, and wrath that would remain with them for the rest of their lives."
– from Notes on Painting (Appendix to the Salon of 1765) by Denis Diderot, translated by John Goodman (Yale University Press, 1995)
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| Caesar van Everdingen Still life with bust of Venus 1665 canvas Mauritshuis, The Hague |
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| Donatello Bust-portrait of Niccolò da Uzzano 1430s polychrome terracotta Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence |
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| Gianlorenzo Bernini Bust-portrait of Scipione Borghese 1632 marble Galleria Borghese, Rome |
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| Francesco Laurana Bust-portrait of Beatrice of Aragon 1474-75 marble Frick Collection, New York |
All things are doubly fair
If patience fashion them
And care –
Verse, enamel, marble, gem.
No idle chains endure:
Yet, Muse, to walk aright,
Lace tight
Thy buskin proud and sure,
Fie on a facile measure,
A shoe where every lout
At pleasure
Slips his foot in and out!
Sculptor, lay by the clay,
On which thy nerveless finger
May linger,
Thy thoughts flown far away.
Keep to Carrara rare,
Struggle with Paros cold,
That hold
The subtle line and fair.
Lest haply nature lose
That proud, that perfect line,
Make thine
The bronze of Syracuse.
And with a tender dread
Upon the agate's face
Retrace
Apollo's golden head.
Despise a watery hue
And tints that soon expire.
With fire
Burn thine enamel true.
Twine, twine in artful wise
The blue-green mermaid's arms,
Mid charms
Of thousand heraldries.
Show in their triple lobe
Virgin and Child, that hold
Their globe,
Cross-crowned and aureoled.
– All things return to dust
Save beauties fashioned well.
The bust
Outlasts the citadel.
Oft doth the plowman's heel,
Breaking an ancient clod,
Reveal
A Caesar or a god.
The gods, too, die, alas!
But deathless and more strong
Than brass
Remains the sovereign song.
Chisel and carve and file,
Till thy vague dream imprint
Its smile
On the unyielding flint.
– Théophile Gautier (1811-1872) translated by George Santayana (1863-1952)
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| Joseph Nollekens Bust-portrait of Laurence Sterne 1766 marble National Portrait Gallery, London |
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| Antico Bust of a youth ca. 1520 bronze Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna |
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| Michelangelo Bust of Brutus 1540 marble Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence |
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| Andrea del Verrocchio Bust of young woman 1465-66 marble Frick Collection, New York |
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| Rombout Verhulst Bust-portrait of Jacob van Reygersbergh 1671 marble Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| Hendrik de Keyser I Bust-portrait of a man 1606 polychrome terracotta Rijksmuseum |
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| attributed to Hendrik de Keyser II Bust-portrait of a man 1636 polychrome terracotta Rijksmuseum |