Hunters in the Snow
1565 · Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Three hunters come home over the hill with one thin catch while villagers skate below. Bruegel painted it for a series on the months.
★ 9.4
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.
The Kiss (Klimt)
1908 · Galerie Belvedere, Vienna
Two lovers kneel wrapped in a single gold robe, rectangles patterning his side of it and circles hers, on a meadow of flowers.
★ 8.9
The Art of Painting (The Artist's Studio)
1668 · Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Vermeer never sold this one. The model poses as Clio, muse of history, with a great map of the Netherlands filling the wall behind.
★ 8.3
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 Tower of Babel
1563 · Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
The tower is already leaning as it goes up, and Bruegel drew the cranes and ramps in enough detail that you could nearly build it.
★ 7.5
The Peasant Wedding
1568 · Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Two men carry the porridge in on an unhinged door, the bagpiper eyes it hungrily, and the bride sits idle under her paper crown.
★ 7.5
Young Hare
1502 · Albertina, Vienna
Every whisker set down separately, and in the dark eye a studio window is reflected. Dürer signed an animal study as a finished work.
★ 7.3
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
Praying Hands
1508 · Albertina, Vienna
A study for an altarpiece that later burned, so the drawing has outlived the painting it was made to serve.
★ 6.8
Jupiter and Io
1533 · Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Jupiter has turned himself into a grey cloud, and a dim face and hand come out of the mist to hold her.
★ 6.8
Children's Games
1560 · Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Around two hundred children playing some eighty different games, no adults anywhere, and no particular place for the eye to start.
★ 6.7
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 Fall of Man
1480 · Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
The serpent stands upright against the tree with a near-human face, and every leaf in the garden is catalogued one by one.
★ 6.5
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
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
The Little Owl
1506 · Albertina, Vienna
Owls carried centuries of symbolism in the north, but Dürer's is mostly just an owl, looking back at you with its talons over a ledge.
★ 5.2
Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand
1508 · Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Thousands are clubbed and thrown off cliffs, and Dürer paints himself walking calmly through the middle of it holding a banner with his name.
★ 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
The Resurrection
1518 · Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Christ rises with his banner while an unearthly dawn detonates behind him in bands of orange and scarlet over black crags.
★ 4.9
Portrait of a Man, Aged 93
1521 · Albertina, Vienna
An inscription gives his age as ninety-three. Dürer drew him in Antwerp and used the head soon after for a Saint Jerome.
★ 4.8
Mediterranean Landscape
1952 · Albertina, Vienna
The whole coast reduced to a few flat zones of color and some quick line. Picasso old, settled in the south, and enjoying himself.
★ 4.4