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| Claude Vignon David (Biblical Hero) ca. 1623-25 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Anonymous Flemish painter Homer (Ancient Greek Poet) 1639 oil on panel Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| Paulus Moreelse Portrait of a Young Woman as the Goddess Flora 1633 oil on panel Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
"From the coalescence of the law of suggestion and the law of relation come the various nuances of process and psychology which are the property of individual painters. Most generally these imply that the artist does not know a priori what he is about. This is like the five-year-old who said she was painting a picture of God, and who, when asked how she knew what He looked like, replied, "That's why I'm painting Him." Certain impulses, certain starting points serve as clues to the inner need of the artist and only after their actual relations and actual suggestions are received can these needs be assessed. Process in painting is never employed for its own sake or for merely creating the marks of a process so much as to authenticate and to specify a capacity to feel. Whether the painting be explicitly or only tangentially representational, the artist in working imputes a certain character, a certain significance to the several elements beyond what they could "objectively" be held to possess. The subjective form, the felt sense of the data, is not simply formal or descriptive but attitudinal, associative, kinesthetic, etc.; that is, it has many levels of reference. As the various impulses are put together the unity of the work is due to the continuity through time of the self of the artist, who discloses what had not been known before."
– from the essay Painting as Painting by Louis Finkelstein, published in 1968 by the Art Museum of the University of Texas at Austin
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| Jacob Jordaens Portrait of a Young Married Couple ca. 1621-22 oil on panel Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Frans Hal- Portrait of a Man ca. 1665 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Jean Petitot Miniature Portrait of a Lady ca. 1650 enamel on gold Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| Rembrandt Portrait of a Man wearing a Black Hat 1634 oil on panel Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Rembrandt Portrait of a Woman wearing a Gold Chain 1634 oil on panel Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Philippe de Champaigne Portrait of Carmelite Father Giovanni Antonio Philippini 1651 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
"What we call subject-matter now, was then painting itself. Subject matter came later on when parts of those works were taken out arbitrarily, when a man for no reason is sitting, standing or lying down. He became a bather; she became a bather; she was reclining; he just stood there looking ahead. That is when the posing in painting began. When a man has no other meaning than that he is sitting, he is a poseur. That's what happened when the burghers got hold of art, and got hold of man, too, for that matter. For really, when you think of all the life and death problems in the art of the Renaissance, who cares if a Chevalier is laughing or that a young girl has a red blouse on."
– Willem de Kooning, from The Renaissance and Order, published in the journal Trans/formation, 1951
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| Nicolaes Maes Portrait of Helena van Heuvel ca. 1675-79 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Jakob Ferdinand Voet Portrait of Livio Odescalchi 1676-77 oil on canvas Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| Cornelius Johnson Portrait of a Woman 1631 oil on panel Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Cornelius Johnson Portrait of a Man ca. 1635-40 oil on canvas Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| Anonymous French painter Copy of the Mona Lisa with columns added at sides ca. 1635-60 oil on panel Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |