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| Knut Janson Woman arranging Hair ca. 1920 etching Moderna Museet, Stockholm |
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| Thomas Couture Juliette ca. 1876 oil on canvas (grisaille sketch) Musée des Augustins de Toulouse |
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| Maarten van Heemskerck Head of Woman after the Antique before 1574 drawing Städel Museum, Frankfurt |
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| Antonio Canova Princess Leopoldine von Liechtenstein ca. 1815 marble Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna |
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| Anonymous German Artist Portrait of Elisabeth Josefine Rizzi-Petke ca. 1830 oil on canvas Belvedere Museum, Vienna |
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| Martinus Rørbye Portrait of the artist's sister Ida Athalia Rørbye 1829 oil on canvas Øregård Museum, Denmark |
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| Jørgen Roed Portrait of Henriette Thyberg 1833 oil on canvas Ordrupgaard Art Museum, Copenhagen |
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| Jean-Antoine Houdon Portrait of Louise Brongniart 1777 marble National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Édouard Manet Portrait of Madame Jules Guillemet 1880 pastel on canvas Ordrupgaard Art Museum, Copenhagen |
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| Auguste Rodin Helene von Nostiz 1907 marble Neue Pinakothek, Munich |
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| Cecil van Haanen Study of a Woman ca. 1895 drawing Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna |
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| François Boucher Woman with Fan ca. 1726 etching Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich |
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| Stefan Schwartz Portrait of Leopoldine Schwartz 1884 marble Belvedere Museum, Vienna |
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| Angelica Kauffmann Head of Young Woman in Renaissance Style 1768 etching Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig |
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| Nicolas de Largillière Portrait of a Lady ca. 1720 oil on canvas Musée Condé, Chantilly |
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| Félix Vallotton Portrait of Gabrielle Vallotton in a Yellow Dress 1908 oil on canvas Clemens-Sels Museum, Neuss, Germany |
There is an impressive description of these uncertainties [distance confusing vision] and the activity they provoke in the searching mind in one of Calderón's plays, The Constant Prince. Relating the appearance of the hostile fleet during a voyage, one of Calderón's characters is reminded of the blurred distances of the subtle painter. The passage is so rich in beauty and insight that it warrants lengthy quotation even in translation:
For, as on the coloured canvas
Subtle pencils, softly blend
Dark and light, in such proportions
That the dim perspectives end –
Now perhaps the famous cities,
Now like caves or misty capes,
For remoteness ever formeth
Monstrous or unreal shapes . . .
So it was, while I alone,
Saw their bulk and vast proportions
But their form remained unknown.
First they seemed to us uplifting
High in heaven their pointed towers,
Clouds that to the sea descended,
To conceive in sapphire showers
What they would bring forth in crystal.
And this fancy seemed more true,
As from their untold abundance
They, methought, could drink the blue
Drop by drop. Again sea monsters
Seemed to us the wandering droves,
Which, to form the train of Neptune,
Issued from their green alcoves,
For the sails, when lightly shaken,
Fanned by zephyrs as by slaves,
Seemed to us like outspread pinions
Fluttering o'er the darkened waves;
Then the mass, approaching nearer,
Seemed a mighty Babylon,
With its hanging gardens pictured
By the streamers fluttering down.
But at last our certain vision
Undeceived, becoming true,
Showed it was a great armada
For I saw the prows cut through
Foam . . .
(translated from Spanish by Denis Florence McCarthy, 1851)
– E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton University Press, 1960)