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 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 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
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 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
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
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
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 Crucifixion
1333 · Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp
Angels dart and grieve around the cross while the Magdalene, hair loose, kneels to embrace its foot. A leaf from a travelling altarpiece.
★ 4.8
Banquet of Herod
1435 · Church of Saints Stephen and Lawrence, Castiglione Olona
The feast on the left, the severed head delivered on the right, both staged in a colonnade built with Masaccio's new perspective.
★ 4.8
The Visitation (Ghirlandaio)
1491 · Louvre, Paris
Elizabeth sinks down and clasps the pregnant Mary. Ghirlandaio ran the busiest workshop in Florence, and a boy named Michelangelo apprenticed there.
★ 4.8
Lamentation of Christ (Durer)
1500 · Alte Pinakothek, Munich
The tiny kneeling figures in the corners are the Nuremberg family who paid for it, inserted so they could share in the grief.
★ 4.8
The Annunciation (David)
1506 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
This is only the angel. Mary received the message on a companion panel, and the two now hang together as a pair.
★ 4.8
Ecce Homo (Matsys)
1526 · Palazzo Ducale, Venice
Christ stands with his eyes lowered while the faces around him are twisted into snarls. Matsys made ugliness do the moral work.
★ 4.8
The Last Supper (de Juanes)
1562 · El Prado, Madrid
Every apostle is named in gold and Judas sits apart with a darkened halo, which makes the panel a teaching aid as much as a picture.
★ 4.8
The Deposition
1602 · Galleria Borghese, Rome
Rubens worked this out in Rome while studying Caravaggio, a rehearsal for the great Descent he would paint back home in Antwerp.
★ 4.8
Golgotha
1900 · The Munch Museum, Oslo
Munch painted this while under treatment in a clinic, and the crucified figure hemmed in by leering faces is not hard to read.
★ 4.8
The Sacrifice of Isaac (Chagall)
1966 · Musee National Marc Chagall, Nice
The angel comes down to stop the knife, in the deep reds and blues Chagall used for his late cycle of biblical paintings.
★ 4.8
The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew
1311 · National Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia
The brothers pause with the net still trailing fish through green water, caught between the work and the man on the shore.
★ 4.9
The Carrying of the Cross (Martini)
1335 · Louvre, Paris
Christ in vivid red is hauled by a rope through the gate of a white, many-towered Jerusalem while children scamper at the edge.
★ 4.9
The Resurrection
1518 · Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Christ rises with his banner while an unearthly dawn detonates behind him in bands of orange and scarlet over black crags.
★ 4.9
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 (Giotto)
1305 · Scrovegni Chapel, Padua
The Virgin lies on the hillside and turns to lay her son in the manger, looking at his face. No gold, just a cold blue sky.
★ 5.2
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
Annunciation (Lippi, Munich)
1450 · Alte Pinakothek, Munich
Gilded hems, fluttering wings, a walled garden behind. Lippi was a friar with a worldly streak and it shows in the ornament.
★ 5.2
The Calvary
1465 · Louvre, Paris
Only the Virgin and Saint John below the cross, and a river winding past a walled town. Early Bellini, carrying feeling in the light.
★ 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
The Parable of the Sower
1557 · Timken Museum of Art, San Diego
You take in the whole river valley before you notice the sower at the bottom corner, or Christ preaching from a boat behind him.
★ 5.2
The Sermon on the Mount (Lorrain)
1656 · The Frick Collection, New York City
Christ preaches from a hilltop and is almost too small to find. Claude was really painting the hills, the water and the distance.
★ 5.2