Primavera
1482 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Venus stands in an orange grove while the Graces dance and spring arrives at her right. The meadow holds hundreds of identifiable plants.
★ 9.8
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.
Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog
1818 · Kunsthalle, Hamburg
A man stands on a summit with his back to us, looking out over fog, so that we end up looking at what he sees.
★ 8.8
Melencolia I
1514 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
A winged figure sits with her compass idle among abandoned tools, and no print in history has drawn more scholarly argument.
★ 8.6
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 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
The Triumph of Death
1562 · El Prado, Madrid
Skeletons herd the living into a coffin-trap while a king clutches his gold and two lovers play music at the corner, not yet looking up.
★ 8.0
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
The Song of Love
1914 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
A marble head, a red rubber glove and a green ball hang together on a wall, and a train goes by in the distance.
★ 7.8
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
Sacred and Profane Love
1514 · Galleria Borghese, Rome
Two women sit at either end of a sarcophagus full of water, and it is the naked one who stands for sacred love.
★ 7.5
Netherlandish Proverbs
1559 · Gemaldegalerie, Berlin
A man bangs his head on a brick wall, another casts roses before swine, and over a hundred proverbs are acted out literally in one village.
★ 7.1
The Blind Leading the Blind
1568 · Museo di Capodimonte, Naples
Six blind men go down one after another, and Bruegel painted their clouded eyes accurately enough for doctors to diagnose the conditions.
★ 7.0
The False Mirror
1928 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
One enormous eye with a cloudy sky for an iris. Whether it is looking out or reflecting back is the question.
★ 6.9
The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things
1490 · El Prado, Madrid
The whole panel is a giant eye, with Christ in the pupil and the words Beware, beware, God sees. It was made for a tabletop.
★ 6.5
Death and Life
1916 · Leopold Museum, Vienna
Death stands at the left in a patterned robe holding a club, watching a heap of sleeping people who have not noticed him.
★ 6.5
The Peaceable Kingdom
1833 · National Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia
Hicks was a Quaker preacher and sign-painter who returned to Isaiah's prophecy about sixty times. Penn signs his treaty in the background.
★ 6.3
Ship of Fools
1500 · Louvre, Paris
A monk and a nun bawl a song over a lute while somebody vomits over the side. The boat has no rudder, which is the point.
★ 6.3
Three Ages of Woman and Death
1510 · Kunstmuseum, Basel
A single thread of gauze links the baby, the beauty, the crone and Death holding an hourglass. Baldung was Dürer's pupil, with darker interests.
★ 6.1
Death and the Miser
1500 · National Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia
Death comes through the door while an angel points to the crucifix and a demon offers one more bag of gold. The man has not chosen.
★ 5.9
The Choice Between Virtue and Vice
1565 · The Frick Collection, New York City
Hercules bolts from Vice toward Virtue and gashes his leg on the thorns of the harder road as he goes.
★ 5.9
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
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
Allegory of Gluttony and Lust
1500 · Yale Art Gallery, New Haven
A man rides a wine barrel while swimmers chase a floating pie. It was sawn off the bottom of the Ship of Fools.
★ 5.2
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
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
I Am Still Learning
1828 · El Prado, Madrid
An old man on two sticks, with Aun aprendo written underneath. Goya drew it in exile and failing health, near the end.
★ 5.2