Around 300 BC, Demetrius of Phalerum is the first writer on rhetoric to describe prosopopoeia, which was already a well-established device in rhetoric and literature, from Homer onwards. Quintilian's lengthy Institutio Oratoria gives a comprehensive account, and a taxonomy of common personifications; no more comprehensive account was written until after the Renaissance. The main Renaissance humanists to deal with the subject at length were Erasmus in his De copia and Petrus Mosellanus in Tabulae de schematibus et tropis, who were copied by other writers throughout the 16th century.

From the late 16th century theoretical writers such as Karel van Mander in his Schilder-boeck (1604) began to treat personification in terms of the visual arts. At the same time the emblem book, describing and illustrating emblematic images that were largely personifications, became enormously popular, both with intellectuals and artists and craftsmen looking for motifs. The most famous of these was the Iconologia of Cesare Ripa, first published unillustrated in 1593, but from 1603 published in many different illustrated editions, using different artists. This set at least the identifying attributes carried by many personifications until the 19th century.

From the 20th century into the 21st, the past use of personification has received greatly increased critical attention, just as the artistic practice of it has greatly declined. Among a number of key works, The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition (1936), by C. S. Lewis was an exploration of courtly love in medieval and Renaissance literature.

The classical repertoire of virtues, seasons, cities and so forth supplied the majority of subjects until the 19th century, but some new personifications became required. The 16th century saw the new personification of the Americas and made the four continents an appealing new set, four figures being better suited to many contexts than three. The 18th-century discovery of Australia was not so quickly followed by an addition to the set, if only for reasons of geometry; Australia is not included in the continents at the corners of the Albert Memorial (1860s). This does have a set of three-figure groups representing agriculture, commerce, engineering and manufacturing, typical of the requirements for large public schemes of the period. A rather late example is the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in New York City (1901–07), which has large groups for the four continents by the entrance, and 12 figures personifying seafaring nations from history high on the facade.

The invention of movable type printing saw Dame Imprimerie ("Lady Printing Press") introduced to the pageants of Lyons, a major printing center, along with "Typosine", a new muse of printing. A large gilt-bronze statue by Evelyn Beatrice Longman, something of a specialist in "allegorical" statues, was commissioned by AT&T for the top of their New York headquarters. Since 1916 it has been titled at different times as the Genius of Telegraphy, Genius of Electricity, and since the 1930s Spirit of Communication. Shakespeare's spirit Ariel was adopted by the sculptor Eric Gill as a personification of broadcasting, and features in his sculptures on Broadcasting House in London (opened 1932).

A number of national personifications stick to the old formulas, with a female in classical dress, carrying attributes suggesting power, wealth, or other virtues.

Libertas, the Roman goddess of liberty, had been important under the Roman Republic, and was somewhat uncomfortably co-opted by the Roman Empire; it was not seen as an innate right, but as granted to some under Roman law. She had appeared on the coins of the assassins of Julius Caesar, defenders of the Roman Republic. The medieval republics, mostly in Italy, greatly valued their liberty, and often use the word, but produce very few direct personifications. With the rise of nationalism and new states, many nationalist personifications included a strong element of liberty, perhaps culminating in the Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World). The long poem Liberty by the Scottish James Thomson (1734), is a lengthy monologue spoken by the "Goddess of Liberty", describing her travels through the ancient world, and then English and British history, before the resolution of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 confirms her position there. Thomson also wrote the lyrics for Rule Britannia, and the two personifications were often combined as a personified "British Liberty", to whom a large monument was erected in the 1750s on his estate at Gibside by a Whig magnate.

But, sometimes alongside these formal figures, a new type of national personification has arisen, typified by John Bull (1712) and Uncle Sam (c. 1812). Both began as figures in more or less satirical literature but achieved their prominence when taken into political cartoons and other visual media. The post-revolutionary Marianne in France, official since 1792, is something of a mixture of styles, sometimes formal and classical, at others a woman of the streets of Paris personified. The Dutch Maiden is one of the earliest of these figures, and was mainly visual from the start, her efforts to repulse unwelcome Spanish advances shown in 16th-century popular prints.