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| Andrea Schiavone Standing Woman writing in a Book ca. 1545-64 etching British Museum |
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| Julia Margaret Cameron May Prinsep Letter-writing 1870 albumen print Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
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| Jan Ekels the Younger Man writing at his Desk 1784 oil on panel Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
"Barthes's praise of writing as a gratuitous, free activity is, in one sense, a political view. He conceives of literature as a perpetual renewal of the right of individual assertion; and all rights are, finally, political ones. Still, Barthes has an evasive relation to politics, and he is one of the great modern refusers of history. Barthes started publishing and mattering in the aftermath of World War II, which, astonishingly, he never mentions; indeed, in all his writings he never, as far as I recall, mentions the word "war." Barthes's friendly way of understanding subjects domesticates them, in the best sense. He lacks anything like Walter Benjamin's tragic awareness that every work of civilization is also a work of barbarism. The ethical burden for Benjamin was a kind of martyrdom; he could not help connecting it with politics. Barthes regards politics as a kind of constriction of the human (and intellectual) subject which has to be outwitted . . . "
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| Sebastiano Conca Genius of History (Fame writing History) before 1764 oil on copper National Trust, Stourhead, Wiltshire |
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| Gari Melchers Writing ca. 1905-1909 oil on canvas Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
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| Jacobus van Looy Man writing at a Desk before 1930 drawing Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
"To assume that society is ruled by monolithic ideologies and repressive mystifications is necessary to Barthes's advocacy of egoism, post-revolutionary but nevertheless antinomian: his notion that the affirmation of the unremittingly personal is a subversive act. This is a classic extension of the aesthete attitude, in which it becomes a politics: a politics of radical individuality. Pleasure is largely identified with unauthorized pleasure, and the right of individual assertion with the sanctity of the asocial self. In the late writings, the theme of protest against power takes the form of an increasingly private definition of experience (as fetishized involvement) and a ludic definition of thought."
– Susan Sontag, from On Roland Barthes (1982)
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| William Blake God writing upon the Tablets of the Covenant ca. 1805 watercolor National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Jusepe de Ribera St Jerome writing 1615 oil on canvas Museo del Prado, Madrid |
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| Vivant Denon after Gabriel Metsu Philosopher in his Study 1784 etching British Museum |
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| Matteo di Giovanni St Jerome in his Study 1482 tempera and oil on panel Harvard Art Museums |
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| Félix Vallotton Woman writing in an Interior 1904 oil on panel Museum of Fine Arts, Houston |
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| Thomas Wyck Scholar in his Study before 1677 oil on canvas Hallwyl Museum, Stockholm |
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| David Wilkie The Letter Writer before 1841 watercolor Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Parmigianino Youth with Book ca. 1518-40 drawing Victoria & Albert Museum |