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| Sebastiano del Piombo Portrait of Pope Clement VII ca. 1531 oil on slate Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| Hans von Aachen The Amazement of the Gods ca. 1590-1600 oil on copper National Gallery, London |
"The relation of this new artistic viewpoint to the problem of space is especially interesting and important. An upholder of the normative, who feels in a classic way, will take for granted an unambiguous, constructed space in which equally unambiguous fixed figures move and act. It is not familiar, visual space dissolved in light and air, for the most part optically judged, that the adherent of the normative strives for, but a space which expresses or should express a higher reality purified of everything accidental. However, the figures of the rhythmic anticlassical painter function otherwise, for in themselves they express neither an established rule of nature, nor any unambiguous relation to understood space. In a word, for them the problem of three-dimensional space vanishes, or can do so. The volumes of the bodes more or less displace the space, that is, they themselves create the space. This already implies that an art of purely flat surfaces is as little involved here as one which is perspective and spatial. A certain effect of depth is often achieved through adding up layers of volumes of this sort, along with an evasion of perspective. In the struggle between picture surface and the presentation of depth in space, which is of such vital importance throughout the whole history of art, this is a particularly interesting solution. A peculiarly unstable situation is created: the stress on the surfaces, on the picture planes, set behind each other in relief layers, does not permit any very plastic or three-dimensional volumes of the bodies to come through in full force, while at the same time it hinders the three-dimensional bodies from giving any very flat impression. . . . In anticlassic Mannerism the figures remain plastic and have volume even if they are unreal in the normative sense, while space, if it is present at all apart from the volumes, is not pushed to the point where it produces an effect of reality. . . . The whole bent of anticlassical art is basically subjective, since it would construct and individually reconstruct from the inside out, from the subject outward, freely, according to the rhythmic feeling present in the artist, while classic art, socially oriented, seeks to crystalize the object for eternity by working out from the regular, from what is valid for everyone."
– from The Anticlassical Style by Walter Friedlaender, originally published as a journal article in Germany in 1925, translated and published in Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism in Italian Painting (Columbia University Press, 1957)
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| Alessandro Allori Body of Christ anointed by two Angels ca. 1593 oil on copper Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest |
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| Francesco Albani Madonna and Child with Angels ca. 1610-15 oil on slate Pinacoteca Capitolina, Rome |
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| Ambrosius Bosschaert Bouquet of flowers in glass vase 1621 oil on copper National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Cornelis van Poelenburgh Miniature portrait of Jan Pellicorne ca. 1626 oil on copper Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| Bartolomé Murillo The Nativity ca. 1665-70 oil on obsidian Museum of Fine Arts, Houston |
Claude-Joseph Vernet (1714-1789) painted The Four Times of Day as a series on copper (below) – canvases now located in Australia. The artist executed similar works on canvas for the Paris Salon of 1763, when Denis Diderot wrote – "Lighting effects that couldn't be more beautifully controlled. Examining these works, I can't get over the special talents, the specific strengths distinguishing them from one another; what results from this? In the end, you begin to think this artist has every talent, that he's capable of anything."
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| Claude-Joseph Vernet The Four Times of Day - Morning 1757 oil on copper Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide |
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| Claude-Joseph Vernet The Four Times of Day - Mid-day 1757 oil on copper Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide |
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| Claude-Joseph Vernet The Four Times of Day - Evening 1757 oil on copper Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide |
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| Claude-Joseph Vernet The Four Times of Day - Night 1757 oil on copper Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide |
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| William H. Craft Portrait of George Stubbs, ARA 1775 enamel on copper Yale Center for British Art |
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| John Francis Rigaud Captain Vincenzo Lunardi with his assistant George Biggin and Mrs. Letitia Anne Sage in a Balloon 1785 oil on copper Yale Center for British Art |
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| Johann Georg Platzer Dancing Scene with Palace Interior ca. 1730-35 oil on copper Skokloster Castle, Sweden |
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| Johann Georg Platzer Fountain Scene in front of a Palace ca. 1730-35 oil on copper Skokloster Castle, Sweden |