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| Eusebio da San Giorgio Head of a Woman ca. 1505 drawing Musée du Louvre |
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| Raphael Head of a Woman ca. 1518-20 drawing (study for painting) Musée du Louvre |
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| Berto di Giovanni Head of the Virgin ca. 1520-25 drawing Musée du Louvre |
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| Andrea Solario Head of St John the Baptist before 1524 drawing Musée du Louvre |
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| Baccio Bandinelli Head Study for Hercules ca. 1526-34 drawing Musée du Louvre |
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| Parmigianino Head from the Laocoön Group ca. 1530-40 drawing Musée du Louvre |
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| Agnolo Bronzino Head of a Woman ca. 1543 drawing (study for fresco) Musée du Louvre |
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| attributed to Polidoro da Caravaggio Head of a Man before 1543 drawing Musée du Louvre |
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| attributed to Giulio Clovio Head with Fantastic Headwear ca. 1545-65 drawing Musée du Louvre |
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| attributed to Giulio Romano Head of a Woman before 1546 drawing, with gouache (fresco cartoon) Musée du Louvre |
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| Michelangelo Anselmi Head of a Youth before 1554 drawing Musée du Louvre |
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| attributed to Daniele da Volterra Head of a Youth before 1566 drawing Musée du Louvre |
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| attributed to Benvenuto Cellini Head of a Woman before 1571 drawing Musée du Louvre |
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| attributed to Agostino Carracci Head of a Man ca. 1590-92 drawing Musée du Louvre |
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| Girolamo Macchietti Head of a Woman before 1592 drawing Musée du Louvre |
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| Alessandro Allori Head of a Woman 1595 drawing (study for painting) Musée du Louvre |
"The admirers of the ancients ought to be very careful when they tell us that the ancients are the sources of good taste and reason as well as of knowledge destined to illuminate all other men; that one is intelligent only in proportion as one admires them; and that Nature wore herself out in producing those great originals; for in fact these admirers make the ancients of another species from ourselves, and science is not in agreement with all these fine phrases. Nature has at hand a certain clay which is always the same and which she unendingly turns and twists into a thousand different shapes, thus forming men, animals, and plants; and certainly she did not shape Plato, Demosthenes, or Homer from finer or better-prepared clay than she used for our philosophers, orators, and poets of today."
"Once we have decided that the ancients have reached the point of perfection in something, let us be satisfied to say they cannot be surpassed, but let us not say they cannot be equaled, as their admirers are very prone to do. Why should we not equal them? As men we always have the right to aspire to do so. Is it not odd that we need to prick up our courage on this point and that we, whose vanity is often based on nothing valid, should sometimes show a humility no less insecure?"
– Fontenelle, A Digression on the Ancients and the Moderns (1688), translated by Scott Elledge and Donald Schier
Fontenelle was writing at a tipping-point in western culture. Prior to the seventeenth century, it was virtually unthinkable for an educated European to question the superiority of ancient Greek and Roman practices and accomplishments (that is, superiority to any and all modern equivalents). This universal conviction gradually weakened as the scientific method began to rear its head, a competition that accelerated rapidly during the eighteenth century. Assaults like Fontenelle's became commonplace until the middle nineteenth century – when they were no longer needed, the prestige of Antiquity having been successfully reduced to the point of irrelevance.