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| Vivant Denon Block of granite engraved with hieroglyphics in Upper Egypt ca. 1802 drawing (print study) British Museum |
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| Muirhead Bone Porch of the Pantheon, Rome 1915 etching, drypoint British Museum |
"To all these remarks should be added the belief of philosophers that if the sky, the stars, the seas, the mountains and all living creatures, together with all other objects, were, the gods willing, reduced to half their size, everything that we see would in no respect appear to be diminished from what it is now. Large, small, long, short, high, low, wide, narrow, light, dark, bright, gloomy, and everything of the kind, which philosophers term accidents, because they may or may not be present in things – all these are such as to be known only by comparison. Virgil says that Aeneas stands head and shoulders above other men, but if compared with Polyphemus, he will seem a pygmy. They say that Euryalus was most beautiful, but if compared with Ganymede, who was carried off by the gods, he might appear to be ugly. The Spaniards think many young maidens fair, whom the Germans would regard as swarthy and dark. Ivory and silver are white, but compared to the swan or snow-white linen, they appear rather pale. For this reason, surfaces will appear very clear and bright in painting when there is the same proportion of white to black in it as there is of light to shade in objects themselves. All these things, then, are learned by comparison. There is in comparison a power which enables us to recognize the presence of more or less or just the same. So we call large what is bigger than this small thing, and very large what is bigger than the large, and bright what is lighter than this dark object, and very bright what is brighter than the light. Comparison is made with things most immediately known. As man is the best known of all things to man, perhaps Protagoras, in saying that man is the scale and measure of all things, meant that accidents in all things are duly compared to and known by the accidents of man. All of which should persuade us that, however small you paint the objects in a painting, they will seem large or small according to the size of any man in the picture. Of all the ancients, the painter Timanthes always seems to have observed this force of comparison best. They say that he represented on a small panel a Cyclops asleep, and put in next to him some satyrs embracing his thumb, so that the sleeping figure appeared very large indeed in proportion to the satyrs."
– Leon Battista Albert, from De Pictura (On Painting), originally written in Latin in Florence in 1435, edited and translated by Cecil Grayson and published by Phaidon Press in 1972
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| attributed to Maarten van Heemskerck Study of the Colosseum, Rome ca. 1536 drawing Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Sir James Dunlop Interior of the Colosseum (with standing figure) ca. 1847-48 salt print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Antonio Joli Capriccio with elegant figures outside and within a classical palace before 1777 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Henri-Joseph Harpignies Near Crémieu 1847 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| attributed to Gian Paolo Panini Interior of St Peters, Rome with a view of the vestibule, looking west before 1765 watercolor Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| attributed to Gian Paolo Panini Interior of St Peters, Rome with Bernini's Baldacchino before 1765 watercolor Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson Road and Trees ca. 1843-47 calotype print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Herman van Swanevelt Rest on the Flight into Egypt before 1655 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Jacob van der Ulft Italian landscape with classical buildings before 1689 drawing Teylers Museum, Haarlem |
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| Charles-Louis Clérisseau Roman ruins ca. 1749-66 watercolour British Museum |
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| Antonio Zucchi Landscape with classical ruins, a woman and child, and two seated men 1783 drawing Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Domenichino Landscape with St John baptizing ca. 1615-20 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |