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| Ivan Aguéli Half-Length Study of Model ca. 1890 oil on canvas Moderna Museet, Stockholm |
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| Fra Angelico Virgin Annunciate ca. 1450-55 tempera on panel (altarpiece fragment) Detroit Institute of Arts |
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| Giovanni Bastianini Bust of Piccarda Donati (character in the Purgatorio of Dante) 1855 marble Palazzo Pitti, Florence |
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| Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio Penitent Magdalen 1597 oil on canvas Palazzo Doria Pamphilj, Rome |
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| Domenico di Paris Ludovico III Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua ca. 1450-53 bronze Bode Museum, Berlin |
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| Henri Fantin-Latour Study (Mlle. Charlotte Dubourg) 1882 pastel on linen Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands |
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| attributed to Bartolomeo Montagna Head of a Woman ca. 1480-90 drawing Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| François-Joseph Navez The Virgin in Contemplation ca. 1820 oil on canvas Musée Fesch, Ajaccio, Corsica |
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| Antoine-Julien Potier Académie ca. 1815-20 drawing Musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes |
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| Roman Empire Head of Venus AD 160-180 marble Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel |
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| Hans Thoma Portrait of a Young Woman ca. 1875 oil on canvas Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel |
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| Vincent van Gogh Portrait of Père Tanguy 1887 oil on canvas Musée Rodin, Paris |
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| Jakob Weidemann Skjalg 1943 oil on panel Lillehammer Kunstmuseum, Norway |
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| Giovanni Bellini Virgin and Child ca. 1510 oil on panel Galleria Borghese, Rome |
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| Wilma Björling Untitled ca. 1970 gelatin silver print Moderna Museet, Stockholm |
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| Jacques-Louis David Head of a Young Woman ca. 1810 drawing Musée Bonnat-Helleu, Bayonne |
In Antioch there was a king named Antiochus. Indeed, from him the city derived its name. He had one daughter, a very lovely young woman in whom Nature's only mistake was making her mortal. When she reached the age of marriage and was becoming more and more beautiful, many suitors started to come for her hand in marriage and to press their suit with promises of large dowries. While her father tried to decide to whom it would be most advantageous to give his daughter in marriage, the shameful flames of desire and lust compelled him to fall in love with his daughter and to have feelings towards her that a father should not have. Though he struggled against his passion and fought against his emotions, he was overcome by love. He lost all sense of propriety and, forgetting that he was a father, took on the role of her husband.
* * *
He kept his feelings disguised and passed himself off to his subjects as a dutiful parent, but within the walls of his palace he took delight in being his daughter's husband. So that he could always enjoy the sinful fruits of her bed he would propose riddles to drive away her suitors, saying "Whichever of you finds the solution to my riddle will have my daughter in marriage. Whoever does not will be beheaded." Anyone who was knowledgeable enough to happen to find the solution to the riddle was beheaded as if he had not answered it, and his head was hung from the top of the city gate. Still, many kings and princes from everywhere hurried to defy death because of the girl's incredible beauty.
– from The Story of Apollonius, King of Tyre, after anonymous Latin manuscripts of the 5th-6th century AD translating a lost Greek text of the 2nd-3rd century AD, and translated into English by Gerald N. Sandy (1989)