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 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.
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
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
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
Portrait of Dante
1495 · Private collection
Dante had been dead nearly two centuries, so this is not a likeness but a verdict, struck in profile like a coin.
★ 4.8
Portrait of a Man, Aged 93
1521 · Albertina, Vienna
An inscription gives his age as ninety-three. Dürer drew him in Antwerp and used the head soon after for a Saint Jerome.
★ 4.8
Christ Blessing (The Savior of the World)
1600 · National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh
Two fingers raised in a gesture reaching back to Byzantium, one hand on a crystal orb, the face long and sorrowful and unmistakably his.
★ 5.2
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
George Washington at Princeton
1779 · Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton
Washington leans on a cannon with captured flags at his feet. Peale knew him and served in the war, so this is the man.
★ 5.2
Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto
1903 · Private collection
They shared a Barcelona studio, and Soto was known as a hard drinker, but Picasso painted him sober and sad in blue.
★ 5.2
The Presidential Family
1967 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
President, wife, child, bishop and general, all inflated into balloons and posed with great solemnity in front of a volcano.
★ 5.2
St. Jerome
1600 · The Frick Collection, New York City
Not the desert hermit but the Doctor of the Church, in cardinal's red with one long hand resting on his own translation of the Bible.
★ 5.4
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
Family Reunion
1867 · Musee d'Orsay, Paris
Eleven of the painter's family on a shaded terrace near Montpellier. Bazille was killed in the Franco-Prussian War at twenty-eight.
★ 5.4
Portrait of Jean Cocteau
1917 · Private collection
Cocteau sits stiffly upright with his neck drawn long, one of the sharpest personalities in Paris turned into an elegant mask.
★ 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
Woman with Folded Arms (Femme aux Bras Croises)
1902 · Private collection
Her crossed arms are a wall against the world, and the blue does the rest. Picasso was painting the outcast and the destitute.
★ 5.6
Self-Portrait with a Cigarette
1923 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
Beckmann had spent the war as a medical orderly, and he looks out of the shadows here like a man finished being surprised.
★ 5.6
Portrait of a Man (Memling)
1470 · The Frick Collection, New York City
Memling put his sitters in front of open countryside instead of a dark ground, an idea that traveled to Italy and came back changed.
★ 5.9
Mummy Portrait of a Boy (Eutyches)
Artist unknown
130 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Painted in hot colored beeswax and bound over the face of a mummy. The strokes are still visible and the eyes startlingly present.
★ 6.1
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
Man with Crossed Arms
1900 · Guggenheim, New York City
Cézanne cared less who the man was than whether the head would hold together as structure, and the slight asymmetries keep it alive.
★ 6.1
Portrait of a Young Man
1517 · National Gallery, London
He swivels over his shoulder to look at you, holding a block that nobody can identify, and his name has been lost entirely.
★ 6.1
Triple Portrait of Cardinal de Richelieu
1642 · National Gallery, London
Richelieu appears three times on one canvas so that a sculptor in Rome could carve a bust without ever meeting him.
★ 6.3
The Beaneater
1580 · Galleria Colonna, Rome
A peasant looks up from his beans as though caught, spoon halfway to his mouth. Painted decades before Caravaggio's followers made a career of this.
★ 6.3
Portrait of a Young Princess
1435 · Louvre, Paris
She sits in profile against a hedge of carnations with butterflies going past, a sprig of juniper on her sleeve punning on her name.
★ 6.5
The Madwoman
1823 · Musee des Beaux Arts Lyon, Lyon
One of a series Géricault painted of asylum patients for a doctor studying obsession, and he gave her the seriousness of a commissioned portrait.
★ 6.5
Head of a Woman (La Scapigliata)
1508 · Galleria Nazionale di Parma, Parma
Her face is finished and breathing while the hair around it stays loose scribble, and nobody knows whether Leonardo considered it done.
★ 6.5
Self-Portrait (Poussin)
1650 · Private collection
Poussin stands in front of his own blank stretched canvases with a portfolio under his arm, presenting himself as a thinker rather than a craftsman.
★ 6.5
LHOOQ
1919 · Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia
Duchamp bought a postcard of the Mona Lisa, drew a moustache on it, and added five letters that make a crude joke in French.
★ 6.5
Boy with a Basket of Fruit
1593 · Galleria Borghese, Rome
Fruit already spotting toward rot, painted with the same attention as the boy holding it. An early statement of what Caravaggio intended.
★ 6.6
Self-Portrait in the Green Bugatti
1925 · Location unknown
She painted herself at the wheel in leather helmet and gloves for a German fashion magazine, and invented the look of the Jazz Age.
★ 6.7
Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci
1490 · Musee Conde, Chantilly
She had been dead for years when this was painted, and the asp at her throat turns her into Cleopatra.
★ 6.7
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
Martin Luther
1532 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Cranach was Luther's friend and godfather to his children, and his workshop turned out this face by the score for Protestant Germany.
★ 6.7
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
Frederic Chopin
1838 · Louvre, Paris
It was half of a double portrait with George Sand listening at the piano, until somebody cut the canvas in two.
★ 6.8
The Balcony
1868 · Musee d'Orsay, Paris
Three people at a green railing all looking different ways and none at each other. Berthe Morisot is the one seated and dreaming.
★ 6.8
Portrait of a Man
1476 · National Gallery, London
A red cap, a parapet, and a gaze that meets yours. Antonello brought the Netherlandish portrait into Italy and killed off the profile.
★ 6.8
Narcissus
1599 · Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome
Narcissus and his reflection close into a circle around a band of black water, and nothing else exists in the picture.
★ 6.8
Mars
1641 · El Prado, Madrid
Mars sits naked and deflated in a plumed helmet with his armor on the floor, looking more like a tired old soldier.
★ 6.8
Boy with a Pipe
1905 · Private collection
A boy from the street in a crown of roses, painted the year Picasso's blue gloom warmed into rose.
★ 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
A Young Girl Reading
1776 · National Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia
For once Fragonard is not being naughty. A girl in yellow reads, and the ruff at her wrist is a few flicks of impasto.
★ 6.9
The Clothed Maja
1800 · El Prado, Madrid
The same woman, same cushions, same pose, now dressed. It is thought to have hung in front of the nude and slid aside.
★ 6.9
Paul Revere
1768 · Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Boston
Copley painted the silversmith in his shirtsleeves at the bench with a teapot in his hand, which was not how gentlemen were usually shown.
★ 7.1
Three Women
1922 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
Three nudes turned on a lathe, smooth and tubular, laid out among furniture built to match. The odalisque redone for the age of the factory.
★ 7.1
Ginevra de Benci
1478 · National Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia
A juniper bush stands behind her as a pun on her name. The panel was later cut down at the bottom, taking her hands with it.
★ 7.2
Louis XIV
1701 · Louvre, Paris
At sixty-three the king still turns out one leg to show the dancer's calf he was proud of, under a cascade of ermine and fleurs-de-lis.
★ 7.2
Self-portrait With Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird
1940 · Harry Ransom Center, Austin
A thorn necklace draws blood at her throat, a dead hummingbird hangs from it, and a monkey and a black cat watch from behind.
★ 7.2
Charles IV of Spain and His Family
1800 · El Prado, Madrid
Goya put himself at an easel in the shadows, as Velázquez had, and painted the royal family looking vacant, pompous or merely plain.
★ 7.2
An Old Man and His Grandson
1490 · Louvre, Paris
The old man's nose is swollen and ruined by disease, and the boy looks up at him without noticing it at all.
★ 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
Portrait of Louis Francois Bertin
1832 · Louvre, Paris
The newspaper magnate leans forward gripping both knees, and the picture became the face of the commercial class that ran nineteenth-century France.
★ 7.4
Portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredan
1504 · National Gallery, London
Bellini painted the brocade thread by thread and turned the official portrait from a profile on a coin into a man met face to face.
★ 7.4
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
Portrait of Madame Matisse (The Green Stripe)
1906 · Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen
Matisse ran a green stripe down his wife's face to divide warm from cool, and used color to do the work of light.
★ 7.4
Portrait of Dr. Gachet
1890 · Private collection
The doctor who was caring for him leans his head on one hand, a sprig of foxglove on the table, the background rippling blue.
★ 7.5
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
The Weeping Woman
1937 · Tate Modern, London
Picasso pulled her out of the screaming mother in Guernica and gave her the face of Dora Maar, his lover and a photographer.
★ 7.5
Family of Saltimbanques
1905 · National Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia
Circus people stand together in an empty landscape without looking at each other. The Rose Period at its largest and most wistful.
★ 7.5
Self-Portrait (van Gogh)
1889 · Musee d'Orsay, Paris
The background ripples around his head like a current in the same blue-green as his suit, and his beard burns red against it.
★ 7.7
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
Three Beauties of the Present Day
1793 · Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Boston
Three famous women of 1790s Edo on mica ground, their faces nearly identical, so you have to read them from the tilt of an eye.
★ 7.8
Woman with a Hat
1905 · San Francisco MOMA, San Francisco
A critic looked at this and called Matisse and his friends fauves, wild beasts, which is how the movement got its name.
★ 7.8
Study After Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X
1953 · Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines
Bacon took Velázquez's composed pope and set him screaming behind a curtain of falling paint. He never saw the original in person.
★ 7.8
Portrait of Juan de Pareja
1650 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Pareja was Velázquez's enslaved assistant, freed soon after this was painted in Rome as a warm-up before the pope sat for him.
★ 7.8
Jahangir Preferring a Sufi Shaikh to Kings
1617 · Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia
The emperor hands a book to a Sufi and ignores the kings waiting below, one of them James I, copied from an English portrait.
★ 7.9
Otani Oniji III as Yakko Edobei
1794 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Sharaku made about 140 actor prints in ten months and then vanished so completely that people still argue about who he was.
★ 7.9
Madame X
1884 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
The strap fell off her shoulder in the 1884 version, Paris was scandalized, her family demanded it come down, and Sargent repainted the strap.
★ 8.0
Whistler's Mother
1871 · Musee d'Orsay, Paris
Whistler called it Arrangement in Grey and Black and insisted it was about tone, not feeling. The sitter was his mother, and nobody was fooled.
★ 8.0
Portrait of Adele Block Bauer
1907 · Neue Galerie, New York City
Only the face and hands are painted naturally and the rest is gold. The Nazis seized it, and a long restitution case eventually got it back.
★ 8.0
Marilyn Diptych
1962 · Tate Modern, London
Warhol silkscreened a publicity photo fifty times just after Monroe died, bright on one half and smudging away to nothing on the other.
★ 8.0
Christ Pantocrator (Sinai)
Artist unknown
560 · Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai
Cover one half of the face, then the other, and two expressions emerge, merciful and severe. Sinai was too remote for the iconoclasts to reach.
★ 8.2
The Lady with the Ermine
1490 · Czartoryski Museum, Krakow
Cecilia Gallerani turns as if someone has come in, and the ermine turns with her. It was her patron's emblem and a pun on her name.
★ 8.2
The Ambassadors
1533 · National Gallery, London
Two men pose with globes, sundials and a lute with a broken string, and a smear on the floor turns into a skull from the side.
★ 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