Hercules and Lichas
1802 · Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome
Hercules, poisoned and raving, grabs the boy by the hair and one leg and throws him. Canova almost never carved anything this violent.
★ 5.2
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.
Neptune and Triton
1623 · Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Neptune drives his trident down to still the waters. It was made for a fountain, so real water once finished the sculpture.
★ 5.4
Fragment of a Queen's Face
Artist unknown
1340 BC · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Only the mouth and chin survive, in honey-yellow jasper, and the break seems to concentrate the thing rather than diminish it.
★ 5.6
Perseus with the Head of Medusa
1806 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
When Napoleon carried off the Apollo Belvedere, the Vatican put this on the empty pedestal, a modern work judged fit for the company.
★ 5.9
Sleeping Hermaphroditos
Artist unknown
Louvre, Paris
You see a sleeping woman until you walk around to the other side. Bernini added the mattress, folds and all, in 1620.
★ 6.7
Bull's Head
1942 · Musee Picasso, Paris
A bicycle saddle and a set of handlebars, joined. Picasso joked that someone might one day turn it back into a bicycle.
★ 6.7
Rebellious Slave
1513 · Louvre, Paris
Carved for a papal tomb that kept shrinking until it was abandoned. What the bonds mean is still argued, but the strain is unmistakable.
★ 6.7
Ugolino and His Sons
1867 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Ugolino bites his own knuckles while his sons starve against his legs, from the passage in Dante where he is tempted to eat them.
★ 6.8
The Deposition (Michelangelo)
1553 · Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (Florence), Florence
Michelangelo carved it for his own tomb, gave Nicodemus his own face, then took a hammer to it and broke off Christ's leg.
★ 6.9
Discobulus (Discus Thrower)
Artist unknown
Palazzo Massimo, Rome
Myron's bronze is lost and this is a Roman marble copy, which is why a strut props the leg the original held up unaided.
★ 7.5
The Seated Scribe
Artist unknown
2500 BC · Louvre, Paris
His eyes are inlaid with rock crystal and copper, and unlike a pharaoh he was given a soft chest and a desk worker's belly.
★ 7.7
Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss
1793 · Louvre, Paris
Cupid's wings stay up as the two bodies cross in a weightless X, cut so smooth the marble stops reading as stone.
★ 7.9
Queen Mother Pendant Mask (Iyoba)
Artist unknown
1520 · British Museum, London
The oba wore it at his hip, its crown made of tiny Portuguese heads. A British expedition looted it from Benin in 1897.
★ 7.9
Moses
1515 · San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome
The horns come from an old mistranslation of the Hebrew for rays of light. He was meant as one figure among many on a papal tomb.
★ 8.0
The Sun Stone (Aztec Calendar Stone)
Artist unknown
1512 · Museo Nacional de Antropologia, Mexico City
Four meters of basalt buried after the conquest and dug up in Mexico City in 1790. Despite the nickname it is not a working calendar.
★ 8.1
Walking Man I
1960 · Fondation Giacometti, Paris
Everything is scraped off the bronze except forward motion. One cast briefly held the record for the most expensive sculpture ever sold.
★ 8.1
Venus of Willendorf
Artist unknown
25000 BC · Naturhistorisches Museum (Vienna), Vienna
Eleven centimeters of limestone from beside the Danube, once tinted red, with a woven cap covering the whole head and no face at all.
★ 8.1
David (Bernini)
1624 · Galleria Borghese, Rome
Bernini put the viewer where Goliath must be standing, so the sling is being wound up to throw straight past your head.
★ 8.4
Gates of Paradise
1452 · Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (Florence), Florence
Ghiberti gave twenty-seven years to these doors, and the name comes from Michelangelo, who is supposed to have said they were fit for paradise.
★ 8.6
Bird in Space
1928 · Museum of Modern Art, New York
American customs taxed it as industrial metal until Brancusi v. United States in 1928 forced the law to recognize abstract sculpture as art.
★ 8.6