Sage and wise people are harder to distinguish visually, without using the cliché of the white-haired and bearded figure more commonly seen as Father Time. To the Romans, the personification of Wisdom was the goddess Minerva or Athena, whose complex background proved a challenge for painters.

Hendrik Goltzius shows a classical and fairly complete set of her attributes: the owl, her distinctive helmet here decorated with olive leaves, a spear, books, a writing quill, and great beauty.

Athena may go back to an even earlier Mycenean goddess. In archaic images, she’s often seen with an owl perched on her hand, and there is a suggestion that she may have originally been a bird goddess, nearly two thousand years BCE. Whatever the origins, there’s no doubt that Athena then Minerva were goddesses of wisdom, learning, crafts, and skill, and that they were strongly associated with owls, who became proxies for wisdom and knowledge. Minerva of the Romans also had Etruscan influences that determined her name in the goddess of war Menrva, with origins from an Italic moon goddess of similar name, hence her helmet and spear.

Solon was a key figure in the development of classical Greek civilisation, most significantly for laying down the tables of law for Athens, and best known for his legendary involvement with Croesus, the fabulously rich king whose name endures in English and other languages in the phrase as rich as Croesus.

Gaspar van den Hoecke’s Croesus Showing his Treasures to Solon is one of several similar paintings made in about 1635, presumably from a common source; others attributed to Cornelis de Vos and Frans Francken II survive. Here Croesus at the right is showing the bald and bearded Solon one of his treasure chambers. Troops in the background may refer to Croesus’ imminent fate at the hands of Cyrus and his Persian forces.

Accounts of wisdom in the Old Testament are generally focussed on the judgement skills of King Solomon, as displayed when he was called to settle a dispute between two women claiming to be the mother of one baby. Solomon commanded that the infant should be cleaved in two by a sword, leading to the real mother relinquishing her claim to the child, to ensure its survival.

Nicolas Poussin’s famous painting of The Judgement of Solomon from 1649 is timed slightly before the sword is raised, and depicts the body language clearly. Solomon’s hands indicate his role as the arbiter, in showing a fair balance between the two sides. The true mother, on the left, holds her left hand up to tell the soldier to stop and spare the infant. Her right hand is extended towards the false mother, indicating that she has asked for the baby to go to her rather than die. The false mother points accusingly at the child, her expression full of hatred. Hands are also raised in the group at the right, suggesting reactions to Solomon’s judgement. Without knowing the story well, though, there are no visual cues to suggest this young king is exceptionally wise.

This panel attributed to Giorgione and dated around 1505 mirrors the composition of his Trial of Moses (c 1496-9), to which it might have been a pendant. Solomon is shown in advanced age, thus inherently wise, commanding a courtier who has raised his short sword ready. The two women straddle the midline of the panel, their body language not clear enough to indicate who is the true mother.

More problematic still are visual accounts of the adoration of the Magi, three ‘wise men’ who are drawn by their observations of a comet to pay homage to the infant Jesus. Most take the easy option of depicting them as three kings, and only a few show them as pioneering astronomers.

Giotto’s frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel at Padua, Italy, show a more elaborate depiction of The Adoration of the Magi (c 1305). The infant Christ rests on the Virgin Mary’s knee; she was originally clad in her signature ultramarine blue, but that has worn away with the years. Mary is accompanied by Joseph and an angel, and the Holy Family is within a wooden shed. The three Magi pay their respects and present their gifts, accompanied by camels and at least two attendants. The comet that attracted their attention is shown as a fireball crossing the sky.

Diego Velázquez broke with tradition in his Adoration of the Magi from 1619 in depicting the figures as real humans rather than idealised models. He had to be careful to maintain distinct appearances for those such as Mary and Jesus who are divine, even covering the Virgin’s feet for the sake of propriety. But the other figures here all look to be real, living and breathing people, and the Magi for once aren’t visual clichés.

With the Age of Enlightenment, paintings came to include the most enlightened in more innovative ways, as ‘philosophers’, particularly in the chiaroscuro images of Joseph Wright of Derby.

In 1766, Wright exhibited one of his most enduring images of the period, A Philosopher Giving that Lecture on the Orrery, in which a Lamp is Put in Place of the Sun. The orrery, a miniature planetarium showing the movements of the planets and their moons, was an impressive high-end Grand Orrery, an expensive device that would undoubtedly have captivated the minds of those able to gaze at it.

There are numerous cues here to different narratives: to Locke’s educational theories with their emphasis on geography, understanding of astronomy, and Newton’s gravitation and mechanics. It has been proposed that the philosopher in the red gown is modelled on Isaac Newton, and the figure at the left taking notes is Wright’s friend Peter Perez Burdett.

In the nineteenth century, wisdom was strongly associated with science and technology, and the equipment used.

Joaquín Sorolla’s Portrait of Dr. Simarro at the Microscope from 1897 shows Doctor Luis Simarro Lacabra (1851-1921), who was an eminent psychiatrist in Madrid, and undertook pioneering research looking at the fine structure of the brain. Among his many achievements was a modification of an established technique for staining microscopic sections of brain, which proved a major advance and an inspiration to the great Spanish neurohistologist Ramon y Cajal. He is shown here with one of the most popular scientific instruments associated with knowledge and wisdom, the microscope.

Few artists have ever gathered as many of the great and wise as Raphael, in his large fresco of The School of Athens, painted between about 1509-10.

This wasn’t recognised as depicting eminent Greek philosophers until 1695, with Vasari’s account in his biography of Raphael assuming that it included a group of evangelists, and others claiming the figures are taken from Dante’s Divine Comedy.

This assorted collection of Greek philosophers, with a few extras, are chatting, teaching, and generally loafing about in an impressive building of grand classical style that is probably Raphael’s extended fantasy based on the contemporary architecture of Bramante. Although there’s no coherent narrative, it contains numerous diverting scenes in which the viewer is challenged to recognise the participants.

The central figures are Plato (left), who carries in his left hand a book titled TIMEO, and Aristotle (right), whose book bears the word ETICA. Seen further to the left in profile is Socrates, and below him is Pythagoras, who is writing in a book while a boy holds in front of him a small blackboard showing the theory of harmony.

His opposite number on the right is Euclid, who is bent over and holding a pair of compasses in his right hand. Behind him are Ptolemy, who is holding a globe and facing away, and Zoroaster, who holds a celestial sphere with his right hand. One striking figure for which I haven’t seen any plausible identification is the woman behind Pythagoras, who appears to have just walked out of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.

Following the conundrums of the group portraits of the first of these two articles, this shows some that appear more straightforward, although they still need to be approached by asking who, where and when.

Raphael’s Portrait of Pope Leo X with Cardinals Giulio de’ Medici and Luigi Rossi (1517-19) groups its three figures closely together. The Pope sits not on a throne, but more informally, a magnificent illuminated book (thought to be the ‘Hamilton’ Bible from about 1350) open in front of him and a magnifying glass in his left hand.

Augustin Théodule Ribot’s Breton Fishermen and Their Families (c 1880-85) is a gritty collection of nameless faces from the coast of the north-west of France. Their features are as hard as the weather that they must have faced.

Moving towards the end of the nineteenth century, and to the artist’s colony of Skagen at the northern tip of Jutland in Denmark, we come to PS Krøyer’s magnificent group portrait of many of the Nordic Impressionists who gathered there each summer. From the left, moving around the table, this shows: Martha Møller Johansen, Viggo Johansen, Christian Krohg, PS Krøyer, Degn Brøndum, Michael Ancher, Oscar Björck, Thorvald Niss, Helene Christensen, Anna Ancher, and Helga Ancher. While this may appear a spontaneous record of an actual event, in fact it was over four years in the painting, and it seems unlikely that this group ever met in these circumstances.

The French Naturalist artist Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret was technically one of the most brilliant of all Cabanel’s students. He could achieve realism of photographic quality, as shown appropriately in this Wedding at the Photographer’s from 1879. Here is a painted group portrait of a couple and their family being photographed for their group portrait.

Many of the greatest portrait painters also created fine group portraits.

Some of Sir Godfrey Kneller’s many portraits of the British gentry include children or groups, such as The Harvey Family, painted in 1721.

In Sir Joshua Reynolds’ portrait of Lady Elizabeth Delmé and Her Children (1777-9) his brushwork becomes painterly for their clothes and in the background.

Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun painted more than thirty portraits of Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), wife of King Louis XVI, who was guillotined on 16 October 1793 during the French Revolution. This family portrait from 1787 shows Marie-Antoinette de Lorraine-Habsbourg, Queen of France, and Her Children. Vigée Le Brun started work on this on 9 July 1786, her sitter choosing a red dress fit for a queen. With her are Marie-Thérèse, the Duchess of Angoulême, Louis-Charles, who was to become Louis XVII of France, and Louis-Joseph, who became the Dauphin. The empty cradle was for Marie-Sophie-Béatrice, who died on 19 June, shortly before she would have been one.

My final paintings are all by artists of their families.

Benjamin West’s group portrait of The Artist and His Family from about 1772 gives insight into his peculiar circumstances. It shows, from the left, the Wests’ older son, Benjamin West’s wife Betsy, cradling their newborn second son in her lap, Benjamin West’s brother Thomas, and father John (who had been born in England), and standing in his lavender gown, holding palette and maulstick, is the artist himself.

Often compared with a traditional Nativity scene, it was described at the time as a “neat little scene of domestic happiness”. But looking at the directions of gaze, and the extraordinary detachment of Thomas and John West, who are staring into the distance, domestic happiness seems far away.

The short-lived Philipp Otto Runge painted this group portrait of We Three in 1805, the year after he had finished his Academy training, and shortly after his marriage. This shows his older brother Johann Daniel on the left, with the artist and his bride Pauline. This may have been painted after the couple had moved back to Hamburg later that year, although they soon returned to live with his parents in Wolgast.

During the summer of 1867, Frédéric Bazille started work on Portraits of the *** Family also known as The Family Gathering, which he didn’t complete until January 1868. This seems to have been one of his most carefully composed paintings, and he devoted a series of sketches to getting the arrangement of the figures and the terrace just right.

The figures include the artist, squeezed in last at the extreme left, an uncle, Bazille’s parents seated on the bench, Bazille’s cousin Pauline des Hours and her husband standing, an aunt and Thérèse des Hours (model for The Pink Dress) seated at the table, his brother Marc and his partner, and at the right Camille, the youngest of the des Hours sisters. This painting marked a special version of a regular summer meeting, as Pauline des Hours and Bazille’s brother Marc married the partners shown in the late summer of 1867.

At the time, such group portraits were exceptional in French art. It was exhibited at the Salon in 1868, and remains one of Bazille’s finest and most innovative works.

By contrast, Michael Peter Ancher’s family portrait on Christmas Day 1900, completed in 1902, looks funereal. A family bible is open on the table as they gaze grimly away from the magnificent triptych of waves behind them. I believe that the woman at the far right is Anna Ancher, then aged 40; she wears a distinctive necklace with an anchor, the Danish for which is anker.

One of Lovis Corinth’s most popular paintings from the early years of the twentieth century is this group portrait of The Artist and his Family (1909). All dressed up for what may have been intended to be a more formal group portrait, the artist’s wife Charlotte sits calmly cradling their daughter Wilhelmine, then just five months old, as the artist is struggling to paint them. Their son Thomas, aged five years, stands on a desk so that he can rest his hand on mother’s shoulder.