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
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.
Christ Appearing on the Road to Emmaus
1311 · Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (Siena), Siena
Christ turns up dressed as a pilgrim with a staff and a traveler's pouch, and the two disciples still have no idea who he is.
★ 4.7
Communion of the Apostles
1452 · San Marco Museum, Florence
Christ stands to place the host on each tongue exactly as a priest does at Mass, in a bare cell-like room with stools.
★ 4.7
Herod's Banquet
1490 · Santa Maria Novella, Florence
The head arrives on a platter inside a serene sunlit loggia full of well-dressed Florentines, many of them the family who paid.
★ 4.7
Madonna and Child with St. John the Baptist
1495 · Palazzo Pitti, Florence
Late Botticelli, with the early lightness gone tense. He had fallen under Savonarola's spell and his religious pictures never relaxed again.
★ 4.7
The Descent to Hell
1311 · Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (Siena), Siena
Christ strides into the cave to pull Adam out by the hand, treading on a chained Satan as he goes.
★ 4.8
Washing of the Feet
1311 · Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (Siena), Siena
Christ kneels with the basin and Peter, flustered, raises a hand to his own head. Some of the others are already loosening their sandals.
★ 4.8
The Wedding Feast of Cana
1311 · Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (Siena), Siena
Servants stoop over the great stone jars in the foreground to draw out wine that was water a moment ago.
★ 5.0
The Road to Calvary (Duccio)
1311 · Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (Siena), Siena
A soldier drags Christ out through the city gate by his robe, the diagonal of the cross cutting against a bristling line of lances.
★ 5.1
The Nativity (da Fabriano)
1423 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
The Child lies on the ground giving off his own light across the straw and his mother's face. One of the first paintings lit from inside.
★ 5.2
Temptation of Adam and Eve
1428 · Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence
Serene, elegant nudes about to ruin everything. It faces Masaccio's Expulsion across the same chapel, calm before the Fall against anguish after.
★ 5.2
The Last Supper (Ghirlandaio)
1480 · Cenacolo di Ognissanti, Florence
Painted on a refectory wall so the monks dined at the end of the same table. Leonardo would blow the arrangement apart a few years later.
★ 5.2
Annunciation (del Sarto)
1512 · Palazzo Pitti, Florence
Gabriel kneels at the right and points across at a Virgin drawing back in surprise, with a stretch of classical ruin between them.
★ 5.2
The Rest on the Flight to Egypt with Saint Francis
1520 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Joseph reaches up to pull down dates from a palm while Saint Francis kneels at the side, added for the chapel that ordered it.
★ 5.2
Crucifix (Giotto)
1312 · Santa Maria Novella, Florence
Where Cimabue's Christ swings in an elegant curve, Giotto's hangs straight down under his own weight, belly sagging, head on his chest.
★ 5.7
Rest during the Flight into Egypt
1423 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
A gilded low sun hangs over the road and the orange trees are heavy with fruit, an early attempt at real morning light across a landscape.
★ 5.7
The Last Judgment (Angelico)
1430 · San Marco Museum, Florence
A corridor of opened graves runs down the middle, the saved dancing into a garden on the left, the damned driven into fire on the right.
★ 5.7
Christ Entering Jerusalem (Duccio)
1311 · Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (Siena), Siena
Duccio and Giotto painted this same entry within a year of each other. Duccio's is the crowded one, full of towers, incident and color.
★ 5.7
Annunciation to the Shepherds
1338 · Basilica di Santa Croce, Florence
A shepherd twists onto his back and throws up a hand against the glare. One of the first real night scenes in Western art.
★ 6.1
Perseus Rescuing Andromeda
1513 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
The sea-monster is part fish and part beast and thoroughly invented, and some of the onlookers on the shore have started playing music.
★ 6.1
Deposition of Christ
1434 · San Marco Museum, Florence
Fra Angelico inherited a Gothic frame begun years earlier and filled it with deep sunlit space instead of gold, which is the whole story.
★ 6.3
The Sacrifice of Isaac
1603 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Isaac is shouting under his father's hand and the ram has already arrived at the right. Caravaggio gives the scene no ceremony whatsoever.
★ 6.3
Moses and the Daughters of Jethro
1524 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Moses wades into a heap of falling nudes to drive off the shepherds, the limbs knotted almost into abstraction under a harsh light.
★ 6.5
The Crucifixion
1311 · Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (Siena), Siena
This is the largest scene on the back of the Maesta, the Virgin fainting on one side and the crowd arguing on the other.
★ 6.6
Madonna Enthroned
1290 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Four prophets peer from arches under the throne holding scrolls that foretell the Virgin Birth, and the throne is angled to suggest depth.
★ 6.6
Portrait of Agnolo Doni
1506 · Palazzo Pitti, Florence
Raphael had just arrived in Florence and studied the Mona Lisa hard, then did the same pose in clear light instead of smoke.
★ 6.7
Crucifix
1288 · Basilica di Santa Croce, Florence
The Arno flood of 1966 stripped most of the paint off it, and the ruined cross became the emblem of the whole disaster.
★ 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
Adoration of the Magi (Botticelli)
1478 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
The three kings are Medici, and the young man in the saffron cloak at the right, looking straight out at us, is Botticelli.
★ 7.0
Madonna of the Harpies
1517 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
The little demons carved on the pedestal were taken for harpies and gave the picture its name. Del Sarto was called the faultless painter.
★ 7.1
Battle of San Romano
1440 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
The central panel of three, with the Florentine commander charging in a gold-and-scarlet hat on a horse turned like a carousel figure.
★ 7.2
The Dream of Constantine
1465 · San Francesco Church (Arezzo), Arezzo
An angel drops steeply from the corner and its light is the only light in the tent. One of the first true night scenes in painting.
★ 7.2
Annunciation (da Vinci)
1475 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
An early work, and Mary's right arm reaches further than an arm can. Gabriel's wings were studied from a real bird.
★ 7.2
Rucellai Madonna
1285 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Four and a half meters tall, the largest panel painted in its century, with six angels kneeling to steady a throne that seems to float.
★ 7.3
Bacchus
1595 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
A real Roman boy dressed up as the wine god, heavy-lidded and slightly flushed, holding out a glass while the fruit beside him bruises.
★ 7.3
Medusa
1597 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Painted on a convex parade shield, so the head bulges toward you at the exact instant of the scream. A showpiece gift for the Medici.
★ 7.3
Ognissanti Madonna
1310 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Where Cimabue and Duccio floated their Madonnas on gold, Giotto gave his weight, a real throne, and a body that presses through the cloth.
★ 7.6
San Marco Altarpiece (Madonna and Saints)
1443 · San Marco Museum, Florence
The saints share one continuous space instead of separate compartments, and the two kneeling physicians are the name-saints of the Medici who paid.
★ 7.6
Madonna with the Long Neck
1540 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Every proportion is wrong on purpose, and a single outsized column rises behind for no reason. Parmigianino died before finishing it.
★ 7.8
The Deposition from the Cross
1528 · Santa Felicita, Florence
No cross, no ground, no sky, just a spiral of mourners in acid pink and sea-green. Florentine Mannerism starts here.
★ 8.0