The Virgin
1913 · Narodni Galerie, Prague
Sleeping women tangled into a whirlpool of pattern and flowers, one of them at the center just about to wake up.
★ 5.7
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.
Wisdom and Strength
1565 · The Frick Collection, New York City
Divine Wisdom looks up and Hercules looks down at a scatter of crowns and jewels, which is the entire argument of the picture.
★ 5.9
Young Spartans Exercising
1860 · National Gallery, London
Spartan girls taunt the boys into wrestling, and Degas made the bodies awkward rather than ideal, which is not how history painting was done.
★ 6.1
The Dream (La Reve)
1932 · Private collection
Marie-Thérèse asleep in a red armchair, her face split into curves. Picasso is said to have done it in a single afternoon.
★ 6.7
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
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
The Three Dancers
1925 · Tate Modern, London
Picasso's classical calm breaks here into something jagged and violent, the limbs flung out almost crucified, set off by the death of an old friend.
★ 7.2
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
Venus of Willendorf
Artist unknown
25000 BC · Naturhistorisches Museum (Vienna), Vienna
Eleven centimeters of limestone from beside the Danube, once tinted red, with a woven cap covering the whole head and no face at all.
★ 8.1
The Embarkation for Cythera
1717 · Louvre, Paris
Couples linger on the shore of Venus's island at dusk, unwilling to board. Watteau gave it to the Academy, which invented a genre to fit it.
★ 8.3
The Dream
1910 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
Rousseau painted this in the last year of his life and explained that the woman on the sofa is dreaming herself into the jungle.
★ 8.3
Where Do We Come From What Are We Where Are We Going
1898 · Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Boston
Gauguin thought he was dying and meant this to be his last work, reading right to left from a sleeping infant to an old woman.
★ 8.5