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| Samuel Prout Stonehenge ca. 1805 watercolor Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Anonymous Dutch artist Scene in an Art Academy ca. 1800-1820 drawing Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| John Flaxman Sketch for Shield of Achilles illustration for the Iliad 1818 drawing British Museum |
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| William Young Ottley (England) Portrait-sketch of John Flaxman drawing 1790s drawing British Museum |
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| William Young Ottley (England) Fame, Justice, Peace before 1836 drawing British Museum |
"Every current of fashion or of worldview derives its force from what is forgotten. This downstream flow is ordinarily so strong that only the group can give itself up to it; the individual – the precursor – is liable to collapse in the face of such violence, as happened with Proust. In other words: what Proust, as an individual, directly experienced in the phenomenon of remembrance, we have to experience indirectly (with regard to the nineteenth century) in studying "current," "fashion," "tendency" – as punishment, if you will, for the sluggishness which keeps us from taking it up ourselves."
– Walter Benjamin, from The Arcades Project (Harvard University Press, 1999)
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| Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (France) Portrait of a Russian General 1815 drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Anonymous Greek artist Ancient columns and obelisks of Istanbul ca. 1809 drawing Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| D.P.G. Humbert de Superville (Netherlands) Man reading early 19th century drawing Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Charles Howard Hodges (England / Netherlands) Portrait of the four Van Loon sisters before 1837 drawing Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Charles Howard Hodges (England / Netherlands) Portrait of Louis Napoleon, King of Holland 1809 oil on canvas Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Thomas Wright (England / Russia) Emperor Alexander I in the studio of George Dowe in the Winter Palace 1826 engraving, aquatint Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
"Perhaps the most deeply hidden motive of the person who collects can be described in this way: he takes up the struggle against dispersion. Right from the start, the great collector is struck by the confusion, by the scatter, in which the things of the world are found. It is the same spectacle that so preoccupied the men of the Baroque; in particular, the world image of the allegorist cannot be explained apart from the passionate, distraught concern with this spectacle. The allegorist is, as it were, the polar opposite of the collector. He has given up the attempt to elucidate things through research into their properties and relations. He dislodges things from their context and, from the outset, relies on his profundity to illuminate their meaning. The collector, by contrast, brings together what belongs together; by keeping in mind their affinities and their succession in time, he can eventually furnish information about his objects. Nevertheless – and this is more important than all the differences that may exist between them – in every collector hides an allegorist, and in every allegorist a collector. As far as the collector is concerned, his collection is never complete; for let him discover just a single piece missing, and everything he's collected remains a patchwork, which is what things are for the allegorist from the beginning. On the other hand, the allegorist – for whom objects represent only keywords in a secret dictionary, which will make known their meanings to the initiated – precisely the allegorist can never have enough of things. With him, one thing is so little capable of taking the place of another that no possible reflection suffices to foresee what meaning his profundity might lay claim to for each one of them."
– Walter Benjamin, from The Arcades Project (Harvard University Press, 1999)
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| Anonymous English jeweler Pendant as Maltese Cross ca. 1805-1830 chalcedony, turquoises, pearls, glass, gold British Museum |
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| Anonymous Russian craftspeople Guercino's design from a Roman ceiling-painting with Aurora's chariot tapestry wall-covering for the apartment of Alexander I in the Winter Palace 1821 wool and silk Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Charles Nègre (France) Self-portrait in Eastern costume ca. 1855-60 albumen silver print Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |