Christ Bearing the Cross, with a Dominican Friar
1360 · The Frick Collection, New York City
Christ looks back over the cross at a tiny Dominican friar kneeling in the corner, the patron drawn into the road to Calvary.
★ 3.2
The Art canon
Sourced and hung.
Every work chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
The Virgin and Child (Ugolino)
1312 · Louvre, Paris
The Child reaches up to grasp the edge of his mother's veil. Ugolino followed Duccio more closely than anyone else did.
★ 3.6
The Flagellation of Christ (Cimabue)
1280 · The Frick Collection, New York City
No bigger than a page, and one of very few works securely given to Cimabue, whom Dante named the best painter of his day.
★ 4.0
The Last Supper (Bouveret)
1896 · Private collection
The light in the darkened room seems to be coming off Christ himself, painted when religious art had largely gone out of fashion.
★ 4.0
The Guitarist
1755 · Musee d'Arts Nantes, Nantes
A young man glances up from his guitar mid-song. Greuze usually painted tearful moral lessons, and here he simply does not.
★ 4.2
The Adoration of the Magi
1813 · Kunsthalle, Hamburg
Overbeck and the Nazarenes lived almost as monks in Rome and painted deliberately like the Italians before Raphael. This is the program.
★ 4.2
Ecce Homo (Ciseri)
1871 · Location unknown
We are standing behind Pilate, looking out over his shoulder at the crowd, which puts us among the officials rather than the mob.
★ 4.2
Melancholy
1874 · Phillips Collection, Washington, District of Columbia
A woman slumped back on a sofa, and Degas reads the whole state of mind off the slope of her shoulders.
★ 4.2
Self-Portrait (Rivera)
1907 · Museo Dolores Olmedo Patino, Mexico City
Rivera as a student in Europe, years before the murals, still working inside the academic tradition he would later blow up.
★ 4.2
The Old Plantation
1795 · Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, Williamsburg
Enslaved people dancing and making music beside their cabins, with African instruments and dress. Attributed to a South Carolina slaveholder.
★ 4.3
The Sermon on the Mount
1442 · San Marco Museum, Florence
Painted on the wall of a friar's cell at San Marco, stripped of gold and ornament so that it settles the mind rather than dazzles.
★ 4.4
St. John the Evangelist
1469 · The Frick Collection, New York City
John stands lost in his book, wrapped in red cloth massed like masonry. One wing of an altarpiece now scattered across five cities.
★ 4.4
The Lamentation
1582 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
The body pushed close to the viewer and lit in sharp pools. The Carracci taught a generation to weld grandeur to direct feeling.
★ 4.4
The Rebuke of Adam and Eve
1626 · National Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia
Adam points at Eve, Eve points at the serpent, and the first sin turns into an ordinary comedy of passing the blame.
★ 4.4
The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins
1825 · Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
Five have kept their lamps lit and five have not, and the ones who have not are pleading. An avenging angel waits above.
★ 4.4
Self-Portrait (Caillebotte)
1892 · Musee d'Orsay, Paris
One of the Impressionist canvases he owned hangs on the wall behind him. Caillebotte's money and his bequest kept the movement alive.
★ 4.4
Mediterranean Landscape
1952 · Albertina, Vienna
The whole coast reduced to a few flat zones of color and some quick line. Picasso old, settled in the south, and enjoying himself.
★ 4.4
Mona Lisa (Botero)
1978 · Location unknown
Botero inflated the most famous face in the world until the little mouth vanished into acres of cheek. Affectionate rather than cruel.
★ 4.4
Marriage at Cana
1305 · Scrovegni Chapel, Padua
A steward tastes from a bowl and a portly servant tends the jars, and the miracle goes by almost without anyone noticing.
★ 4.6
The Ascension
1305 · Scrovegni Chapel, Padua
Christ's fingertips cross out of the human part of the picture and blur into light, which is the whole event in one detail.
★ 4.6