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| Ancient Egyptian Culture Canopic Jar with Jackal-Headed God 664-525 BC alabaster National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC |
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| Ancient Greek Culture Elderly Official AD 350-360 marble (excavated in Athens) National Archaeological Museum, Athens |
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| Francesco di Simone Ferrucci Virgin and Child ca. 1475 marble relief Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Gregorio di Lorenzo (Master of the Marble Madonnas) Portrait of Pietro Talani ca. 1490-1500 marble National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Adam Dirksz Plaque with the Mass of St Gregory ca. 1510-25 boxwood British Museum |
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| Enameller IP (Limoges artist) Sibyls Casket ca. 1530-35 enamel plaques on copper, mounted on gilt-metal structure British Museum |
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| Enameller IP (Limoges artist) Sibyls Casket - detail ca. 1530-35 enamel plaques on copper, mounted on gilt-metal structure British Museum |
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| workshop of Orazio Fontana Vase with Mythological Scenes ca. 1565-70 - maiolica body created in Urbino ca. 1765 - gilt-metal mounts added in Paris (modified vase purchased in Paris by Horace Walpole) British Museum |
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| Hans Faust The Griffin's Claw Cup before 1583 buffalo horn with silver-gilt mounts British Museum |
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| John Gibson Hunter and Dog ca. 1847 marble Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney |
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| Joseph Gott Nymph before 1860 marble Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia |
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| Hans Gasser Fountain at the Vienna State Opera 1867-68 marble and bronze Vienna State Opera |
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| Antonio Frilli Replica of Antique Discobolus ca. 1895 marble Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia |
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| Otto Gutfreund Embracing Figures 1913 plaster Guggenheim Museum, New York |
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| Lyonel Feininger Group of Houses and Figures ca. 1949 painted wood Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Herbert Ferber Game no. 2 1950 lead, copper and brass on painted wood base Guggenheim Museum, New York |
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| Llyn Foulkes Three 1977 assemblage of photograph, painted wood, metal Guggenheim Museum, New York |
The air, the sea, the fire, the beasts be cruel executioners of man; yet beasts, fire, sea and air are pitiful to man in comparison of man, for more men are destroyed by men than by them all. What scorns, wrongs, contumelies, imprisonments, torments, poisons, receiveth man of man! What engines and new works of death are daily found out by man against man! What laws to thrall his liberty, fantasies and bugbears to infatuate and inveigle his reason! Amongst the beasts is there any that hath so servile a lot in another's behalf as man? Yet neither is content, nor he who reineth nor he who serveth.
The half of our life is spent in sleep, which hath such a resemblance to death that often it separates the soul from the body and teacheth it a sort of being above it, making it soar beyond the sphere of sensual delights and attain to knowledge unto which, while the body did awake, it dared scarce aspire. And who would not, rather than remain chained in this loathsome galley of the world, sleep ever (that is, die) having all things at one stay, be free from those vexations, disasters, contempts, indignities, and many many anguishes unto which this life is envassaled and made thrall? And, well looked upon, our greatest contentment and happiness here seemeth rather to consist in an absence of misery than in the enjoying of any great good.
– William Drummond of Hawthornden, from A Cypress Grove (London: Hawthornden Press, 1919, reprinting the original edition of 1623)