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| Emmy Klinker Portrait of a Young Woman ca. 1920 oil on cardboard Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal |
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| Ernst Barlach Lilith 1923 woodcut (illustration to Goethe's Faust) Goethe Haus, Frankfurt |
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| Jan Sadeler the Elder after Marten de Vos the Elder Geometry (series, Seven Liberal Arts) ca. 1590 engraving Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna |
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| Georg Pencz Superbia (series, Seven Deadly Sins) ca. 1541 engraving Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich |
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| Hieronymus Wierix Allegory of Wisdom and Innocence ca. 1573 engraving Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel |
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| Ditlev Conrad Blunck The Nightmare 1846 oil on canvas Nivaagaard Museum, Denmark |
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| Francesco Salviati Portrait of a Young Man ca. 1543-48 oil on panel Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna |
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| Emil Orlik Woman on a Sofa ca. 1900 color etching Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Félix Vallotton La Flûte (series, Les Instruments de Musique) ca. 1895 woodcut Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève |
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| Jacob Jordaens Old Man and Young Woman feeding a Parrot ca. 1638-40 oil on canvas Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna |
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| Hans Wechtlin The Owl ca. 1515 woodcut Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna |
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| Jost Amman after Johann Melchior Bocksberger St Luke writing his Gospel ca. 1570 hand-colored woodcut Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel |
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| Rembrandt St Jerome reading at the Foot of a Tree 1634 etching Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna |
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| Cavaliere d'Arpino (Giuseppe Cesari) St Jerome ca. 1600 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Brest |
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| Bartholome Zeitblom St Anthony Abbot ca. 1482-85 oil on panel Staatsgalerie im Hohes Schloss Füssen |
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| Artus Wolfaerts The Four Evangelists ca. 1620 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux |
One of the most influential teachers of art in nineteenth-century France, Lecoq de Boisbaudran, who was an ardent reformer and advocate of memory training, provides another instance of this interaction. Critical of accepted life-class routines and eager to guide the student toward "the immense field, almost unexplored, of living action, of changing, fugitive effects," he obtained permission to let models pose in the open air and made them move freely, as Rodin was to do: "Once our admiration rose to the height of enthusiasm. One of our models, a man of splendid stature with a great sweeping beard, lay at rest upon the bank of the pond, close to a group of rushes, in an attitude at once easy and beautiful. The illusion was complete – mythology made true lived before our eyes, for there, before us was a river god of old, ruling in quiet dignity over the course of his waters . . ."
What an opportunity, we may infer, to test tradition and improve upon it. It is examples such as these which explain the gradual nature of all artistic changes, for variations can be controlled and checked only against a set of invariants.
Does not the experience of Lecoq de Boisbaudran suggest the revolutionary work of a much greater innovator, Manet's Déjeuner sur l'herbe? It is well known that this daring exploit of naturalism was based, not on an incident in the environs of Paris as the scandalized public believed, but on a print from Raphael's circle which none other than Fréart de Chambray had extolled as a masterpiece of composition. Seen from our point of view this borrowing loses much of its puzzling nature. The systematic explorer can afford less than any one else to rely on random actions. He cannot just splash colors about to see what happens, for even if he should like the effect he could never repeat it. The naturalistic image, as we have seen, is a very closely knit configuration of relationships which cannot be varied beyond certain limits without becoming unintelligible to artist and public alike. Manet's action in modifying a compositional schema of Raphael's shows that he knew the value of the adage "One thing at a time." Language grows by introducing new words, but a language consisting only of new words and a new syntax would be indistinguishable from gibberish.
– E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton University Press, 1960)