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| Thomas Anschutz A Rose 1907 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Anonymous Italian potter working in Viterbo Jug with Finely-Dressed Woman ca. 1430-40 tin-glazed earthenware Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Albert Bartholomé The Artist's Wife Reading 1883 pastel Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
"More perfectly than any other fairy-tale, Snow White expresses melancholy. The pure image of this mood is the queen looking out into the snow through her window and wishing for her daughter, after the lifelessly living beauty of the flakes, the black mourning of the window-frame, the stab of bleeding, and then dying in childbirth. The happy end takes away nothing of this. As the granting of her wish is death, so the saving remains illusion. For deeper knowledge cannot believe that she was awakened who lies as if asleep in the glass coffin. Is not the poisoned bite of apple which the journey shakes from her throat, rather than a means of murder, the rest of her unlived, banished life, from which only now she truly recovers, since she is lured by no more false messengers? And how inadequate happiness sounds: 'Snow-White felt kindly towards him and went with him.' How it is revoked by the wicked triumph over wickedness. So, when we are hoping for rescue, a voice tells us that hope is in vain, yet it is powerless hope alone that allows us to draw a single breath. All contemplation can do no more than patiently trace the ambiguity of melancholy in ever new configurations. Truth is inseparable from the illusory belief that from the figures of the unreal one day, in spite of all, real deliverance will come."
– Theodor Adorno, from Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, published in German in 1951, translated by E.F.N. Jephcott and published in English in 1974
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| Franz Antoine Young Woman in a Dotted Dress ca. 1850-70 albumen silver print from glass negative Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Lorenzo di Credi Portrait of a Young Woman ca. 1490-1500 oil on panel Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Jacques-Louis David Young Woman of Frascati ca. 1775-76 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Anonymous forger of Johannes Vermeer Young Woman Reading a Letter ca. 1925-27 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Ancient Greece Head of Aphrodite 3rd century BC marble Minneapolis Institute of Art |
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| Govert Flinck Young Woman as a Shepherdess before 1660 oil on panel, transferred to canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Aubrey Beardsley Young Woman Surrounded by Briars, Lightning, and Roses (illustration for Le Morte d'Arthur) 1893 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
from Artist and Model
He will set her to work. She listens, stares,
Puts on the masks. Why not? the flesh
Accommodates, and welcomes home the wanderer.
All ports are one port; the door opens, the bed's
Page blank. Another mask. Another, here
In the cave where she remains to furnish
The world to her keeper's cell, subjects
For the endless busyness of mind and hand.
Smiling a myopic squint of mouth,
Taking his peek-a-boo of masks for
The gestures of her inwardness, confessions,
Expressions, and lays back her head
For abandon or tilts her elbow for offense . . .
– Irving Feldman, published in Poetry (1963)
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| Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier La Capresse des Colonies 1861 marble and bronze Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier The Jewish Woman of Algiers 1862 marble and bronze Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Léon Davent after Parmigianino Young Woman in Antique Dress 1540 etching Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Edmund Charles Tarbell Across the Room ca. 1899 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Anonymous designer Women's Government Relief Dress and Belt 1930s cotton Philadelphia Museum of Art |