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| Franz Eybl Portrait of a Woman 1849 oil on panel Belvedere Museum, Vienna |
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| Frederick Sandys Portrait of Susanna Rose 1862 oil on canvas Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
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| Jan Veth Heintje 1893 lithograph Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands |
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| Bartholomäus Bruyn the Younger Portrait of a Lady ca. 1560-70 oil on panel Art Institute of Chicago |
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| George Mosson Portrait of the artist's Mother ca. 1895 oil on canvas Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Charles Chaplin Game of Lotto 1865 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen |
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| Philip Corbet Portrait of a Young Woman ca. 1830 oil on panel Teylers Museum, Haarlem |
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| Abraham van Strij Portrait of Petronella van der Koogh, Wife of the Artist ca. 1810 oil on canvas Dordrechts Museum, Netherlands |
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| Théodore Géricault The Madwoman ca. 1819-22 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon |
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| Pierre Subleyras Portrait of a Woman ca. 1740 oil on canvas Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Isaac Claesz Swanenburg Portrait of Cecilia Vrancken Paets 1593 oil on panel Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden |
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| Jan van Scorel Portrait of Agatha van Schoonhoven 1529 oil on panel Palazzo Doria Pamphilj, Rome |
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| Jean-François Lassave Portrait of Madame Bourgeois, Grandmother of the Artist ca. 1770 oil on canvas Musée des Augustins de Toulouse |
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| Johann Peter Krafft Miniature Portrait of Anna Katherina Magdalena Krafft 1812- gouache on card Belvedere Museum, Vienna |
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| Wilhelm Claudius Portrait of a Peasant Woman 1877 oil on cardboard Galerie Neue Meister (Albertinum), Dresden |
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| Anonymous Photographer Josephine of Leuchtenberg, Queen of Sweden ca. 1850 daguerreotype Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm |
Clytemnestra: I raised a cry of triumphant joy long ago, when the first nocturnal fire-messenger came, telling of the capture and destruction of Ilium; and some rebuked me and said 'Have beacon-watches persuaded you to believe that Troy is now a sacked city? How very like a woman, to let her heart take flight!' By such words they tried to show me up as one deranged: but nevertheless I made sacrifices, and throughout the city one person here, another there, began loudly raising the auspicious cry of triumph according to women's custom, while they lulled the altar-flames in the gods' abodes by feeding them with sweet-smelling incense. And now what need is there for you to tell me about it more fully? I shall hear the whole story from the king himself, I will make haste to give my honourable husband the best possible welcome when he comes home. What light could be sweeter than this for a wife to behold, when she opens the door to a husband whom god has brought safe home from the wars? Report this back to my lord, and tell him to come with all speed, for his city passionately desires him. May he come to find the wife in his palace just as faithful as when he left her, a watchdog of the house, friendly to him and hostile to those who wished him ill, and loyal in all other respects too, having broken no seal in all this long time, and I know no more of pleasure from another man, or of scandalous rumour, than I do of the tempering of steel. Such is my boast, and being full of truth, it is not a disgraceful one for a noble woman to utter.
– Aeschylus, from Agamemnon (458 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)