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| James Tissot Portrait of the Marquis and Marchioness of Miramon (detail) 1865 oil on canvas Musée d'Orsay, Paris |
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| Juan van der Hamen Still Life ca. 1620-30 oil on canvas Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels |
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| Carlo Maratti Amoretti assembling and hanging a Garland 1694 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
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| Jacobus van Looy The Garden (Nasturtiums) 1893 oil on canvas Teylers Museum, Haarlem |
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| Henri Fantin-Latour Roses ca. 1891 oil on canvas Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon |
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| Gustave Courbet The Trellis 1862 oil on canvas Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio |
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| Pietro Venale and workshop Illusionistic Arbor with Putto and Birds (detail) 1552-53 vault fresco Garden Pergola, Villa Giulia, Rome |
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| Pierre Bonnard The Checkered Tablecloth 1939 oil on canvas Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Édouard Manet Carnations and Clematis in Glass Vase ca. 1882 oil on canvas Musée d'Orsay, Paris |
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| Caravaggio Boy with a Basket of Fruit 1593 oil on canvas Galleria Borghese, Rome |
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| Pieter Claesz Still Life - A Meal 1636 oil on panel Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam |
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| Adriaen Coorte Still Life with Wild Strawberries 1705 oil on panel Mauritshuis, The Hague |
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| Jacob Marrel Still Life with Flowers on a Stone Shelf ca. 1645 oil on panel Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem |
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| Edmond Xavier Kapp Piano Recital 1956 oil on canvas The Hepworth, Wakefield, Yorkshire |
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| Jan Miense Molenaer The Artist with his Family making Music ca. 1634-36 oil on canvas Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem |
"I say that whenever I conceive of any material or corporeal substance, I am compelled of necessity to think that it is limited and shaped in this or that fashion, that it is large or small in regard to other things, that it is in this or that place, at this or that time, that it moves or is immobile, that it touches or does not touch another body, that it is one, a few or many; nor can I by any stretch of the imagination separate it from these conditions. But that it is white or red, bitter or sweet, sounding or mute, of pleasant or unpleasant odor, I do not feel compelled in my mind to conceive it as necessarily accompanied by such conditions. On the contrary, if we were not assisted by our senses, reasoning and imagination would never apprehend those qualities. Therefore I think that tastes, odors, colors, and so on . . . are nothing but pure names, and reside only in the feeling body, so that if the animal is removed, all these qualities are taken away and annihilated."
– Galileo Galilei, from Il Saggiatore (The Assayer), published in Rome in 1623 under the sponsorship of Cardinal Francesco Barberini, who became Pope Urban VIII in the same year, and who had the book read aloud at his dinner table to stimulate conversation