Young Woman Sleeping
1654 · British Museum, London
A few sweeps of brush and brown ink, most of the paper left bare, and the whole weight of a sleeping head is there.
★ 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.
Clown with Lute
1623 · Louvre, Paris
Caught mid-strum with his cap askew and his mouth open, painted so fast the brushstrokes still seem to be moving.
★ 5.4
Self-Portrait (Rembrandt, 1629)
1629 · Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Rembrandt was barely in his twenties and using his own face as a laboratory for light. Dozens more would follow over forty years.
★ 6.1
Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters
1608 · Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Hundreds of tiny figures skating, sledging and falling over on one frozen river. Avercamp was deaf and mute and known as the mute of Kampen.
★ 6.1
The Merry Family
1668 · Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
The parents sing and drink and a toddler is handed a pipe. A note in the picture reads: as the old sing, so the young pipe.
★ 6.3
Meagre Company
1637 · Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Hals left this militia portrait unfinished and another painter finished the right-hand figures, a join you can still see if you look.
★ 6.3
Et in Arcadia Ego (Guercino)
1622 · Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome
Two shepherds stop at a skull on a plinth and read the words carved there. Guercino used the motto first, decades before Poussin.
★ 6.5
Sacrifice of Isaac
1634 · Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
An angel grabs Abraham's wrist and the knife is still falling through the air, his hand clamped over the boy's face.
★ 6.7
Feast of St. Nicholas
1665 · Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
One child hugs her presents while a boy howls because his shoe held nothing but a birch rod, and the grandmother beckons with a secret.
★ 6.8
Wedding Portrait of Isaac Massa and Beatrix van der Laen
1622 · Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
A married couple sitting on the grass, leaning into each other and visibly amused, which is not how marriage portraits were done.
★ 6.8
Gypsy Girl
1626 · Louvre, Paris
Not a commission but a tronie, a character study made to show off. Hals catches her half-laugh before it has finished.
★ 6.8
Philosopher in Meditation
1632 · Louvre, Paris
Daylight from a window, firelight from a hearth, and a great spiral staircase winding up into the dark between them.
★ 6.9
The Merry Drinker
1630 · Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
He raises his glass and talks straight at you, painted in slashing strokes laid down about as fast as the moment they catch.
★ 6.9
Officer and a Laughing Girl
1660 · The Frick Collection, New York City
The officer's hat and back loom enormous in the foreground while the girl sits small and bright beyond, which is exactly how the eye works.
★ 7.1
The Storm on the Sea of Galilee
1633 · Stolen
Rembrandt's only seascape, and one disciple is being sick over the side. Stolen from the Gardner Museum in 1990 and never recovered.
★ 7.2
Young Woman with a Water Jug
1662 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
One hand on the pitcher, one on the window latch, and morning light coming through onto a white cap. Nothing happens, perfectly.
★ 7.2
Laughing Cavalier
1624 · Wallace Collection, London
He is neither laughing nor a cavalier. The lace and gold thread on that sleeve were flicked on in a few confident strokes.
★ 7.4
Woman Holding a Balance
1665 · National Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia
The scales in her hand are empty and perfectly level, and the painting on the wall behind her is a Last Judgment.
★ 7.4
The Polish Rider
1655 · The Frick Collection, New York City
A young horseman rides into the dusk armed and alert, and nobody has ever agreed who he is or where he is going.
★ 7.5
Self-Portrait (Rembrandt, 1658)
1658 · The Frick Collection, New York City
Rembrandt painted himself enthroned like a monarch, staff across his lap, in the same year bankruptcy took his house and everything in it.
★ 7.5
Self-Portrait (Rembrandt, 1665)
1665 · Kenwood House, London
The old painter holds his brushes and palette, and behind him two large arcs are drawn on the wall that nobody has explained.
★ 7.7
The Art of Painting (The Artist's Studio)
1668 · Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Vermeer never sold this one. The model poses as Clio, muse of history, with a great map of the Netherlands filling the wall behind.
★ 8.3
The Milkmaid (Vermeer)
1660 · Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
A kitchen maid pours a thin stream of milk in ordinary daylight, given the weight and stillness usually reserved for saints.
★ 8.5
Girl with a Pearl Earring
1665 · Mauritshuis, The Hague
Not a portrait of anyone in particular but a tronie, a study of a type, which somehow made her the most looked-at girl in art.
★ 8.6
Return of the Prodigal Son
1669 · Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
The son kneels with his shorn head against his father's chest and the old man's hands come down on his back. Rembrandt painted it near death.
★ 8.7
The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp
1632 · Mauritshuis, The Hague
Rembrandt was twenty-five and new in Amsterdam when the surgeons' guild hired him, and he built every head in the room around one lifted tendon.
★ 8.8
The Night Watch
1642 · Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
A militia company surges out of the shadow with a dog barking and a girl glowing among the men. Varnish, not night, made it dark.
★ 9.2
View of Delft
1660 · Mauritshuis, The Hague
Vermeer painted his own city from across the harbor, almost his only townscape. Proust called it the most beautiful painting in the world.
★ 9.3