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| Anonymous Portrait of Count Jacob de la Gardie 1606 oil on panel Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Gaspar de Crayer Portrait of Anne of Austria, consort of Emperor Mathias before 1618 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
"The traditions of portraiture in the West extend back to antiquity and particularly to ancient Greece and Rome, where lifelike depictions of distinguished men and women appeared in sculpture and on coins. After many centuries in which generic representation had been the norm, distinctive portrait likenesses began to reappear in Europe in the fifteenth century. This change reflected a new growth of interest in everyday life and individual identity as well as a revival of Greco-Roman custom."
"One of the hallmarks of European portraiture is a sense of reality, an apparent intention to depict the unique appearance of a particular person. Each portrait is thus meant to express individual identity, but as Erwin Panofsky recognized, it also "seeks to bring out whatever the sitter has in common with the rest of humanity." This second aspect of portraiture comes across in the considerable conservatism of the genre: most portraits produced in Renaissance and Baroque Europe follow one of a very small range of conventional formats. . . . The conventional aspects of portraiture ensure that each example will bear some resemblance to the next, and yet this general similarity makes the distinctive qualities of each one the more salient. . . . Hints of personality are especially evident in seventeenth-century portrayals of less exalted persons."
– from an essay by Jean Sorabella on the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History from the Metropolitan Museum
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| Jan Mytens Family portrait with St John the Baptist 1639 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Peter Raemsdorf Portrait of Ebbe Ulfeld 1639 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Frans Hals Portrait of unknown woman 1643 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| attributed to Cornelis Picolet Portrait of Pontus Fredrik de la Gardie 1650 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Rembrandt Portrait of an old woman 1655 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Rembrandt Portrait of an old man 1655 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Bartholomeus van der Helst Portrait of Louis De Geer 1656 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Bartholomeus van der Helst Portrait of Emanuel De Geer 1656 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Isaack Luttichuys Portrait of unknown young man 1661 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Giovanni Battista Gaulli Portrait of Pope Alexander VII ca. 1665 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| attributed to Caspar Kenckel Portrait of Olof Rudbeck 1687 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| David Richter Portrait of unknown woman 1697 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |