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| Alexandre-Denis-Abel de Pujol Portrait of Madame Adolphe Blanqui ca. 1840 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes |
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| Christoph Unterberger Tobit burying the Dead ca. 1780 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest |
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| Orazio Borgianni Christ among the Doctors ca. 1609 oil on canvas Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Bartolomeo Cavarozzi Holy Family with St Catherine ca. 1617-19 oil on canvas Staatsgalerie Stuttgart |
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| attributed Luca Giordano Philosopher ca. 1650 oil on canvas Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
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| Bernardo Strozzi St Catherine of Alexandria ca. 1615 oil on canvas Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
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| Franz Sigrist Flight into Egypt ca. 1763 oil on copper Deutsche Barockgalerie, Augsburg |
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| Amable-Louis-Claude Pagnest The Gladiator 1813 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims |
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| Friedrich Karl Hausmann Interior 1849 oil on paper Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Giulio Romano Virgin and Child with young St John the Baptist ca. 1518-20 oil on panel Galleria Borghese, Rome |
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| Gaspar de Crayer Portrait of Nicolas Triest, Count d'Auweghem 1620 oil on canvas Harvard Art Museums |
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| Honoré Daumier Wrestler ca. 1852 oil on panel Ordrupgaard, Art Museum Copenhagen |
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| Karel Dujardin Hagar and Ishmael in the Wilderness ca. 1662 oil on canvas John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota |
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| Valentin de Boulogne Moses ca. 1628 oil on canvas Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
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| Anonymous Italian Artist Deposition 17th century oil on canvas Princeton University Art Museum |
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| Orazio Riminaldi David with the Head of Goliath ca. 1617-20 oil on canvas Galleria Sabauda, Turin |
"As you know, I am in my seventeenth year and for the past year have been deemed to have entered manhood. Until now I have been but an ignorant child. If I had not experienced Aphrodite, I would count myself blessed in my firmness. But now that I have become your daughter's prisoner, not dishonorably but with the consent of you both, how long shall I deny I am her captive? Men of my age are clearly ready for marriage: for how many of them have remained chaste until their fifteenth year? I am the victim of a law not written but sanctioned by foolish convention: that among us young women usually marry at the age of fifteen. Who in his right mind would deny that natural feelings are the best sanction for this kind of union? Girls of fourteen conceive, and indeed some give birth to children. Will your daughter not even marry? We should wait two years, you will say. Suppose we do wait – will our Fortune also wait? I am a mortal man engaged to a mortal girl. I am subject not only to the common lot of mankind – to illnesses and to the destiny that often carries away even those who sit quietly at home beside the hearth; but voyages and war after war await me; and I am not without daring or one to wrap myself in a veil of cowardice to keep me from harm, but am, to put it directly, as you know me to be. Let my kingship, my passion, let the insecurity and uncertainty of what awaits me – let all these hasten our marriage and let the fact that we are only children in our families be reason for anticipation and forethought, so that if Fortune should will some disaster on us we may leave you the pledges. Perhaps you will say that I am shameless in discussing these matters. I would have been shameless if I had seduced her secretly and surreptitiously taken advantage of her with the aid of night, drink, and the complicity of servant and nurse to satisfy our mutual passion. It is not shameless to speak to a mother about her daughter's earnestly desired marriage and to demand what you have granted and to ask that the wishes of our two households and of the entire kingdom not be delayed until some occasion that will not lie within your grasp."
– from Ninus, an anonymous romance fragment written in Greek between the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD, translated into English by Gerald N. Sandy (1989)