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| Hubert Robert Figure Study ca. 1755-65 drawing National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Benjamin West Académie ca. 1785 drawing (with tiny head added by another hand) Morgan Library, New York |
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| Federico Barocci Figure Studies ca. 1565-67 drawing National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Luca Cambiaso Sibyl with Scroll ca. 1555 drawing National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Anonymous Italian Artist Académie 17th century drawing National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Wilhelm Lehmbruck Bather with Head on Knee 1913 drypoint National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| John Singer Sargent Figure Study for Apollo and the Muses ca. 1921 drawing National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Gabriel de Saint-Aubin Figure Sketches ca. 1750 drawing National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Giambattista Tiepolo Figure with Bent Head wearing a Cloak ca. 1750 drawing Morgan Library, New York |
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| John Skippe after Andrea del Sarto Two Figures 1783 chiaroscuro woodcut Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Alfred George Stevens Académie ca. 1860 drawing Princeton University Art Museum |
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| Sébastien Leclerc Seated Figure 1700 engraving (leaf from drawing manual) Gemäldegalerie, Dresden |
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| Clare Leighton Illustration to Thomas Hardy's Return of the Native 1929 woodcut Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Willem Panneels Académie ca. 1626-29 drawing Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen |
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| Lodewijk Toeput (Ludovico Pozzoserrato) Torso of Young Man from the Back ca. 1580 drawing Morgan Library, New York |
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| Salvator Rosa Seated Soldier Resting ca. 1665 drawing Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
"History may well be like geology; deep stratifications and configurations are not easily seen. Nonetheless, "the study of earthquakes or tremors is the most effective means we have for learning about the inside of our planet, within which these phenomena occur." Perhaps by analogy, the examination of certain great catastrophes is an effective means for uncovering those forces within the overall upheaval of a society that had once assured its relative cohesiveness, and for identifying among the instinctive reactions of fear, grief, and shame impulses that are rarely perceptible. Their crude reality is revealed in the conflict between social groups and the lust for possessions common to any collectivity. It would be naive, however, to believe that these factors along explain everything. Before, during, and after a great collective tragedy, irrepressible gusts of fantasy are released, like waves of suffocating heat during a conflagration. In the convulsions of cruelty and terror that take place, the modalities of this fantasy emerge in all their power and all their potential for growth. In this sense, the sack of Rome has been revelatory."
– André Chastel, The Sack of Rome, 1527, translated by Beth Archer, 1983 (expanded from the A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, 1977, and published by Princeton University Press and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)