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| Charles Noel Flagg Harriet Smith Brown (Mrs Horace Brown) 1898 oil on canvas New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut |
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| Georg Flegel Still Life with Fish ca. 1630-40 oil on panel Deutsche Barockgalerie, Augsburg |
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| Jean-Jacques Flipart after Joseph-Marie Vien La Jeune Corinthienne 1765 engraving British Museum |
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| Marcello Fogolino Return of the Prodigal Son before 1549 oil on canvas Musée Ingres Bourdelle, Montauban |
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| Simon Fokke Looting of a Wine Merchant in Rotterdam 1751 hand-colored etching Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Jean-Louis Forain The Verdict ca. 1900-1910 oil on canvas North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh |
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| Una Foster Onions 1951 linocut National Gallery of Australia, Canberra |
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| Giacomo Francia Holy Family with St Elizabeth and St John the Baptist ca. 1513 engraving Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich |
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| Ivor Francis Presiding Genius 1942 oil on canvas National Gallery of Australia, Canberra |
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| Ambrosius Francken the Elder Martyrdom of St Crispin and St Crispinian of Soissons before 1618 oil on panel (altarpiece) Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp |
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| John Peter Frankenstein Portrait of Godfrey Frankenstein ca. 1840 oil on canvas Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC |
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| Antonio Frasconi Moon (from series, Ode to Lorca) 1962 lithograph Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Leonard Freed Katowice, Poland 1973 gelatin silver print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Don Freeman Ladies of the Evening 1934 lithograph Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC |
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| Roman Freulich Gloria Swanson 1947 gelatin silver print National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC |
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| Francis Frith Wells Cathedral 1890 albumen silver print National Gallery of Australia, Canberra |
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| Jesse Frohman Donna Karan 1996 inkjet print National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC |
from Minturno, or, On Beauty
(Modeled on Plato's Hippias Major, Minturno is a conversation between the philosopher Antonio Minturno and Geronimo Ruscelli, a colorful courtier and dilettante)
Geronimo Ruscelli: The beautiful will then be a part of the pleasing, for as that which gives delight is the object of all the senses, only that small part of it deserves to be called beautiful which is judged to be so by the nobler senses. Not only therefore, will colors and lights and the various images of things be beautiful, but also songs and the music of instruments, which provide a most beautiful harmony for ears that are suitably refined. But it seems to me that to these senses belongs as well everything that has been written of customs, laws, and the sciences – things which yield many marvelous beauties.
Antonio Minturno: What you say is undoubtedly true. Still, the senses judge in one way of color and sound, and in another way of proportions or the things that belong to the sciences, for of the latter the senses are unable to make a judgment that is true, and act instead as ministers or messengers to the intellect, bringing to the mind what they learn from the world outside. And so it seems that the beauty we are in the process of seeking is not one and the same, for the objects of the material senses must of necessity be corruptible, as must the senses themselves, but the mind, which is divine and immortal, judges only of those things that resemble it. The genius of beauty is not, then, one or univocal, as the philosophers say and as Nifo believed, but just as the light of the glow-worm or of rotting mushrooms appearing at night differs from the light of the stars or the sun, so the beauty of the things of this world is very different from that beauty which may be contemplated in the eternal and divine forms. If this is true, that which is beautiful in itself will not be pleasing to the senses, for they will not be able to judge of it.
– Torquato Tasso (ca. 1593-94), translated by Dain A. Trafton and Carnes Lord (1982)