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| Michel Wolgemut Amazons (illustration from the Nuremberg Chronicle) 1493 woodcut and letterpress Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Anonymous Italian Artist Amazon ca. 1500 bronze plaquette National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Monogrammist FG after Francesco Primaticcio Alexander welcoming Thalestris, Queen of the Amazons ca. 1529-42 engraving Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Luca Cambiaso Battle of Hercules and the Amazons ca. 1544-50 drawing Museo del Prado, Madrid |
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| Anonymous Italian Artist Bust of Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons ca. 1550 engraving British Museum |
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| Anonymous Italian Artist Antique Statue of Mounted Amazon (Farnese Collection, Rome) 1584 engraving Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Anonymous Italian Artist Antique Statues of Mounted Amazon and Warrior (Farnese Collection, Rome) 1641 engraving Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Otto van Veen Amazons and Scythians ca. 1597-99 oil on panel Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
from Leviathan (chapter 45)
"The impression made on the organs of sight by lucid bodies, either in one direct line, or in many lines, reflected from opaque, or refracted in the passage through diaphanous bodies, produceth in living creatures, in whom God hath placed such organs, an imagination of the object, from whence the impression procedeth; which imagination is called sight; and seemeth not to be mere imagination, but the body itself without us; in the same manner, as when a man violently presseth his eye, there appears to him a light without, and before him, which no man perceiveth but himself; because there is indeed no such thing without him, but only a motion in the interior organs, pressing by resistance outward, that makes him think so. And the motion made by this pressure, continuing after the object which caused it is removed, is that we call imagination and memory; and, in sleep, and sometimes in great distemper of the organs by sickness or violence, a dream . . ."
"And whereas a man can fancy shapes he never saw; making up a figure out of the parts of divers creatures; as the poets make their centaurs, chimeras, and other monsters never seen: so can he also give matter to those shapes, and make them in wood, clay, or metal. And these are also called images, not for the resemblance of any corporeal thing, but for the resemblance of some phantastical inhabitants of the brain of the maker. But in these idols, as they are originally in the brain, and as they are painted, carved, moulded, or moulten in matter, there is a similitude of the one to the other, for which the material body made by art, may be said to be the image of the fantastical idols made by nature."
– Thomas Hobbes (1651)
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| Anonymous Flemish Weavers Alexander encounters Thalestris, Queen of the Amazons ca. 1600 wool and silk tapestry Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Pietro Santi Bartoli after Raphael workshop Battle of Greeks and Amazons (copied from fresco, Vatican Loggias) before 1700 etching Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Nicolas Poussin Hercules and Theseus battling Amazons (study for decoration of the Long Gallery at the Louvre) ca. 1641-42 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Stefano della Bella Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons (from the series, Jeu des Reynes Renommées) ca. 1644 etching Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Anonymous French Artist Amazon and Centaur 17th century drawing Yale University Art Gallery |
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| Claude Deruet Mounted Amazon with a Spear before 1660 drawing Morgan Library, New York |
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| Pierre Mignard Meeting of Alexander with the Queen of the Amazon ca. 1660 oil on canvas Musée Calvet, Avignon |