Summer
1563 · Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
A cucumber nose, a peach cheek, a garlic-clove ear, and Arcimboldo's own name woven into the collar of plaited straw.
★ 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.
Autumn
1572 · Louvre, Paris
A head of pears and pomegranates crowned with grapes, sitting in a split wooden barrel bound with willow hoops. The season of the wine harvest.
★ 5.2
Spring
1573 · Louvre, Paris
Rosebud lips, a lily for a nose, and hair made of tulips and peonies. The freshest and most delicate of the four seasons.
★ 5.2
Deposition of Christ (Bronzino)
1545 · Musee des Beaux Arts et d'Archeologie Besancon, Besancon
Where his teacher Pontormo made the subject swirl with anxiety, Bronzino polishes it: jewel-bright blues and pinks, grief made elegant.
★ 5.4
Winter
1563 · Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
A head made of cracked bark and bare twigs, standing for the dying year and, flatteringly, for a Habsburg dynasty that stays evergreen.
★ 5.7
Leda and the Swan (Correggio)
1532 · Gemaldegalerie, Berlin
The story runs across the canvas in stages, arrival to departure. A later owner cut Leda's head out in disgust and it was repainted.
★ 5.7
The Conversion of St. Paul
1530 · Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Saul sprawls on the ground with his arm up while the white horse rears above him with something close to ballet in it.
★ 5.9
Ecce Homo (Titian)
1548 · El Prado, Madrid
Behold the man, said Pilate. Titian strips out the crowd and leaves the scourged Christ half-length, close enough to pray to.
★ 6.1
Agony in the Garden (El Greco)
1605 · Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio
The sleeping apostles are sealed inside a bubble of rock while soldiers wind toward Christ in the distance, all lit by cold moonlight.
★ 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
Danae
1554 · Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Zeus arrives as a shower of gold and the old nurse scrambles to catch the coins in her apron while Danae simply reclines.
★ 6.9
Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time
1545 · National Gallery, London
A girl with a reptile's body offers a honeycomb and Time pulls back a curtain. The cold puzzle was probably a gift for the French king.
★ 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
Venus of Urbino
1538 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Titian woke Giorgione's sleeping Venus, brought her indoors, and had her look straight at us, probably to mark a wedding in Urbino.
★ 8.7