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| Jean-Laurent Mosnier Portrait of Princess Shakhovskaya 1806 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Henri-François Riesener Portrait of Sofia Apraxina 1818-19 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Franz Xavier Winterhalter Portrait of Grand Duchess Maria Nikolayevna 1857 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
"Those therefore are mightily deceived, who esteeme a corrupt and defective kind of painting more popular and plausible, if it take pleasure in a childish licentiousnesse, if it be puffed up with an immoderate swelling, if it keepe a great stirre about idle and unprofitable undertakings, if it love to pranke with lightly fading flowers of vaine ornaments, if it entertaine abrupt and dangerous indeavors in stead of sublime and magnificent matters, if it runneth mad with a loose kind of dissolute libertie. For though it be too true, that workes of this kinde prevaile most of all with the Vulgars, as being more agreeable unto their grosse and unexcised capacities, with a favourable shew of obvious and ready pleasure; such unadvised delights for all that, though never so naturall unto them, are very seldome constant. Neither was it ever seen, that any artist got by such workes a durable admiration in the hearts of men, but an uncertaine approbation onely, accompanied with idle acclamations, and with a flying joy; seeing all that praise, as being blasted in the hearbe or in the floure, not attaine to any ripe or fruitfull maturitie; chiefely if those admirers chance in the meane time to meet with any other more perfect and truly absolute piece of worke, which maketh their former admiration presently vanish and come to nothing, by an admiration of better things. "Those who are taken with an outward shew of things," saith Quintilian, "judge sometimes that there is more beautie in them which are polled, shaved, smoothed, curled, and painted, than incorrupt Nature can give unto them: even as if pulchritude did proceed out of the corruption of manners."
– from Book Three (chapter three) of The Painting of the Ancients by Franciscus Junius, first published in English in 1638 – edited by Keith Aldrich, Philipp Fehl and Raina Fel for University of California Press, 1991
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| Franz Xavier Winterhalter Portrait of Princess Sophia Radziwill 1864 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean-Jacques Henner Study of a woman ca. 1890-95 canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Roberto Fontana Portrait of a Lady ca. 1875-95 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Gabriel Schachinger Portrait of a man 1896 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Robert Lefèvre Portrait of Count Andrey Bezborodko 1804 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres Portrait of Count Nikolai Guryev 1821 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Horace Vernet Self-portrait 1835 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Pierre-Paul Prud'hon Portrait of Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Prince de Bénévent as Grand Chamberlain of the (Napoleonic) Empire 1807 oil on canvas Musée Carnavalet, Paris |
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| Édouard Manet Portrait of Mlle Isabelle Lemonnier ca. 1879-80 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Carle Vernet Equestrian portrait of Napoleon ca. 1805-10 oil on canvas private collection |
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| Heinrich von Angeli Portrait of Grand Duchess Maria Fyodorovna 1874 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |