Hercules and Lichas
1802 · Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome
Hercules, poisoned and raving, grabs the boy by the hair and one leg and throws him. Canova almost never carved anything this violent.
★ 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.
Perseus with the Head of Medusa
1806 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
When Napoleon carried off the Apollo Belvedere, the Vatican put this on the empty pedestal, a modern work judged fit for the company.
★ 5.9
Oedipus and the Sphinx
1808 · Louvre, Paris
Oedipus leans in close to answer the riddle, and a previous contestant's foot is lying at the bottom edge as a warning.
★ 6.5
The Declaration of Independence
1819 · Yale Art Gallery, New Haven
Trumbull knew many of the men and painted their faces from life, which is why this version ended up on the two-dollar bill.
★ 6.8
The Intervention of the Sabine Women
1799 · Louvre, Paris
Hersilia throws herself between the two armies with her arms out. David painted it after the Terror, arguing for reconciliation instead of oaths.
★ 7.1
Coronation of Napoleon
1807 · Louvre, Paris
Napoleon has already crowned himself and is now crowning Josephine, with the pope seated behind him and reduced to a spectator.
★ 7.2
The Valpincon Bather
1808 · Louvre, Paris
A bare back seen from behind under even light, with a striped turban wound round the head. Ingres returned to this view all his life.
★ 7.2
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
The Death of Socrates
1787 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Socrates reaches for the hemlock without looking at it, still arguing with his other hand while his students fall apart around him.
★ 7.4
The Nightmare
1781 · Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit
An incubus squats on a sleeping woman's chest while a wild-eyed horse pushes through the curtains. It made Fuseli famous immediately.
★ 7.8
Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss
1793 · Louvre, Paris
Cupid's wings stay up as the two bodies cross in a weightless X, cut so smooth the marble stops reading as stone.
★ 7.9
The Oath of the Horatii
1785 · Louvre, Paris
Three brothers salute the swords their father holds up while the women of the house collapse at the right, four years before the Revolution.
★ 8.7
The Death of Marat
1793 · Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels
David was Marat's friend and political ally, and he laid the murdered man out in his bath with the gravity of a religious lamentation.
★ 9.0
Guernica
1937 · Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid
A screaming horse, a mother with her dead child, all in grey. Picasso painted it in weeks after German bombers leveled a Basque town.
★ 9.9