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| Bertha Wegmann Portrait of artist Jeanna Bauck 1885 oil on canvas Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen |
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| Félix Vallotton Portrait of Félix Jasinski 1887 oil on canvas Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki |
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| Albert Lang Study of a Young Woman 1891 oil on canvas Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe |
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| Anna Ancher Portrait of Ane Hedvig Brøndum 1893 oil on canvas Skagens Museum, Denmark |
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| Anonymous Venetian Artist Portrait of a Young Man ca. 1500 oil on panel, transferred to canvas Alte Pinakothek, Munich |
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| Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot Pensive Young Woman ca. 1857 oil on zinc Hamburger Kunsthalle |
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| Adriaen Thomasz Key Portrait of a Man 1575 oil on panel Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
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| Ferdinand Tellgmann Portrait of an Engraver 1834 oil on canvas Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel |
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| Titian Nobleman of the Cornaro Family with a Falcon ca. 1527-29 oil on canvas Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha |
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| Anthony van Dyck Portrait of a Genovese Nobleman 1624 oil on canvas Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna |
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| Diego Velazquez Portrait of a Young Nobleman ca. 1631 oil on canvas Alte Pinakothek, Munich |
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| Sebastiano del Piombo Portrait of a Humanist ca. 1520 oil on panel National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| El Greco Portrait of a Man ca. 1570 oil on canvas Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna |
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| Francesco Salviati Portrait of a Man ca. 1540-50 oil on panel Museo di Capodimonte, Naples |
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| Jean-Étienne Liotard Portrait of Jean Sarasin 1759 pastel on vellum Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève |
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| Francesco Hayez Self Portrait at age 78 1869 oil on canvas Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna |
What a painter inquires into is not the nature of the physical world but the nature of our reactions to it. He is not concerned with causes but with the mechanisms of certain effects. His is a psychological problem – that of conjuring up a convincing image despite the fact that not one individual shade corresponds to what we call "reality." In order to understand this puzzle – as far as we can claim to understand it as yet – science had to explore the capacity of our minds to register relationships rather than individual elements.
We were not endowed with this capacity by nature in order to produce art: it appears that we could never find our way about in this world if we were not thus attuned to relationships. Just as a tune remains the same whatever key it is played in, so we respond to light intervals, to what have been called "gradients," rather than to the measurable quantity of light reflected from any given object. . . . Without this faculty of man and beast alike to recognize identities across the variations of difference, to make allowance for changed conditions, and to preserve the framework of a stable world, art could not exist.
– E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton University Press, 1960).