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
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.
David (Bernini)
1624 · Galleria Borghese, Rome
Bernini put the viewer where Goliath must be standing, so the sling is being wound up to throw straight past your head.
★ 8.4
The Resurrection (Francesca)
1460 · Museo Civico, Sansepolcro
The trees behind Christ turn from bare to leafing across the panel. In 1944 a British officer held his guns rather than shell the town.
★ 8.2
Walking Man I
1960 · Fondation Giacometti, Paris
Everything is scraped off the bronze except forward motion. One cast briefly held the record for the most expensive sculpture ever sold.
★ 8.1
The Entombment (Caravaggio)
1603 · Vatican Museums, Rome
The corner of the stone slab juts out of the picture so the body looks about to be laid down in the room with you.
★ 7.8
The Seated Scribe
Artist unknown
2500 BC · Louvre, Paris
His eyes are inlaid with rock crystal and copper, and unlike a pharaoh he was given a soft chest and a desk worker's belly.
★ 7.7
Watson and the Shark
1778 · Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit
Brook Watson really did lose a leg to a shark in Havana harbor, and Copley put a Black sailor at the top of the rescue.
★ 7.2
The Elevation of the Cross
1611 · Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp
Rubens had just come back from Italy with Caravaggio's light and Michelangelo's anatomy, and announced himself with this straining diagonal.
★ 7.2
Venus and Mars
1483 · National Gallery, London
Mars sleeps the sleep of the spent lover while satyrs make off with his lance, one blowing a conch in his ear without waking him.
★ 7.2
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
The Colossus
1812 · El Prado, Madrid
A giant stands with his head in the clouds while everything below scatters. Whether Goya actually painted it is now disputed.
★ 6.8
Rebellious Slave
1513 · Louvre, Paris
Carved for a papal tomb that kept shrinking until it was abandoned. What the bonds mean is still argued, but the strain is unmistakable.
★ 6.7
San Sebastian
1480 · Louvre, Paris
Sebastian takes his arrows with the composure of a statue, tied to a Roman column in a field of accurately ruined antiquity.
★ 6.6
The Bather
1885 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
He stands in bathing trunks with his hands on his hips, built out of planes and given the same weight as a mountain.
★ 6.3
Saturn Devouring His Son (Rubens)
1636 · El Prado, Madrid
Saturn bites into his own infant to stop the prophecy, the star of Saturn overhead. Goya would take the same subject somewhere much worse.
★ 6.3
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
In the Vanilla Grove, Man and Horse
1891 · Guggenheim, New York City
A man and a white horse in a Tahitian grove, painted on Gauguin's first stay, flat and warm and looking for a paradise.
★ 5.2
Bathers (Summer Scene)
1869 · Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Young men lounging on a riverbank in dappled light, the oldest subject in painting given ordinary modern bodies and modern poses.
★ 4.8
The Flagellation of Christ (Cimabue)
1280 · The Frick Collection, New York City
No bigger than a page, and one of very few works securely given to Cimabue, whom Dante named the best painter of his day.
★ 4.0