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 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 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
Maddona with Child and Six Angels
1305 · Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria, Perugia
Six angels lean in along the throne with their heads tilted, which turns a rigid Byzantine formula into something nearly intimate.
★ 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 Virgin Appearing to St. Bernard
1494 · Alte Pinakothek, Munich
Perugino taught Raphael, and the poise, the airy arcade and the soft Umbrian valley here pass almost unchanged into the pupil's work.
★ 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
Christ Taking Leave of His Mother
1520 · National Gallery, London
The episode appears in no Gospel at all, and Altdorfer nearly buries the figures under a forest of enormous trees and luminous sky.
★ 5.2
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 Rest on the Flight into Egypt (David)
1510 · National Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia
The Virgin offers the Child a bunch of grapes, which stand for the wine of his death, in an exactly observed Flemish wood.
★ 6.1
The Barbadori Altarpiece
1437 · Louvre, Paris
The angels crowd in like inquisitive children. One of the first paintings to put the Virgin and saints in a single shared space.
★ 6.3
The Coronation of the Virgin
1641 · El Prado, Madrid
Father and Son lower the crown together while the group curves into a soft heart shape. Painted for the Spanish queen's private oratory.
★ 6.3
The Coronation of the Virgin
1430 · Louvre, Paris
Christ crowns his mother at the top of a flight of steps that recede convincingly into depth, which is the new thing here.
★ 6.5
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
Festival of the Rose Garlands
1506 · Narodni Galerie, Prague
Dürer painted it in Venice to prove a German could beat the Venetians at color, and wrote on it that it took five months.
★ 6.6
Madonna
1894 · National Gallery (Oslo), Oslo
Munch gave the Madonna a red halo, closed eyes and parted lips, and made desire and death the same subject.
★ 6.8
Madonna and Child (Duccio)
1300 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Christ reaches up to push his mother's veil aside. Scorch marks on the original frame record centuries of candles set before it.
★ 6.8
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
Nativity
1530 · Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden
All the light in the picture comes off the newborn child, and one shepherd throws up a hand against the glare.
★ 7.1
Flight into Egypt (A. Carracci)
1604 · Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome
The holy family is tiny and the landscape does everything, which is the arrangement Poussin and Claude would build whole careers on.
★ 7.1