Mona Lisa
1504 · Louvre, Paris
She was probably Lisa Gherardini, a merchant's wife, and Leonardo kept reworking her for years and never handed the portrait over.
★ 9.9
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.
Bust of Nefertiti
1345 BC · Neues Museum, Berlin
One eye is inlaid and the other left blank, which suggests the bust was a master model kept in the sculptor's workshop at Amarna.
★ 9.4
Girl with a Pearl Earring
1665 · Mauritshuis, The Hague
Not a portrait of anyone in particular but a tronie, a study of a type, which somehow made her the most looked-at girl in art.
★ 8.6
The Lady with the Ermine
1490 · Czartoryski Museum, Krakow
Cecilia Gallerani turns as if someone has come in, and the ermine turns with her. It was her patron's emblem and a pun on her name.
★ 8.2
Whistler's Mother
1871 · Musee d'Orsay, Paris
Whistler called it Arrangement in Grey and Black and insisted it was about tone, not feeling. The sitter was his mother, and nobody was fooled.
★ 8.0
Portrait of Adele Block Bauer
1907 · Neue Galerie, New York City
Only the face and hands are painted naturally and the rest is gold. The Nazis seized it, and a long restitution case eventually got it back.
★ 8.0
Madame X
1884 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
The strap fell off her shoulder in the 1884 version, Paris was scandalized, her family demanded it come down, and Sargent repainted the strap.
★ 8.0
Queen Mother Pendant Mask (Iyoba)
Artist unknown
1520 · British Museum, London
The oba wore it at his hip, its crown made of tiny Portuguese heads. A British expedition looted it from Benin in 1897.
★ 7.9
Three Beauties of the Present Day
1793 · Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Boston
Three famous women of 1790s Edo on mica ground, their faces nearly identical, so you have to read them from the tilt of an eye.
★ 7.8
Woman with a Hat
1905 · San Francisco MOMA, San Francisco
A critic looked at this and called Matisse and his friends fauves, wild beasts, which is how the movement got its name.
★ 7.8
The Two Fridas
1939 · Museo de Arte Moderno (Mexico City), Mexico City
Two versions of herself hold hands with one artery running between them, clamped shut. She painted it as her marriage to Rivera fell apart.
★ 7.7
The Weeping Woman
1937 · Tate Modern, London
Picasso pulled her out of the screaming mother in Guernica and gave her the face of Dora Maar, his lover and a photographer.
★ 7.5
Portrait of Madame Matisse (The Green Stripe)
1906 · Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen
Matisse ran a green stripe down his wife's face to divide warm from cool, and used color to do the work of light.
★ 7.4
Medusa
1597 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Painted on a convex parade shield, so the head bulges toward you at the exact instant of the scream. A showpiece gift for the Medici.
★ 7.3
Ginevra de Benci
1478 · National Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia
A juniper bush stands behind her as a pun on her name. The panel was later cut down at the bottom, taking her hands with it.
★ 7.2
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
A Young Girl Reading
1776 · National Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia
For once Fragonard is not being naughty. A girl in yellow reads, and the ruff at her wrist is a few flicks of impasto.
★ 6.9
The Clothed Maja
1800 · El Prado, Madrid
The same woman, same cushions, same pose, now dressed. It is thought to have hung in front of the nude and slid aside.
★ 6.9
Gypsy Girl
1626 · Louvre, Paris
Not a commission but a tronie, a character study made to show off. Hals catches her half-laugh before it has finished.
★ 6.8
Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci
1490 · Musee Conde, Chantilly
She had been dead for years when this was painted, and the asp at her throat turns her into Cleopatra.
★ 6.7
Woman Combing Her Hair
1920 · Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
Goyo oversaw every stage of his prints himself and finished only a handful before dying young. This is the one everyone knows.
★ 6.5
Head of a Woman (La Scapigliata)
1508 · Galleria Nazionale di Parma, Parma
Her face is finished and breathing while the hair around it stays loose scribble, and nobody knows whether Leonardo considered it done.
★ 6.5
LHOOQ
1919 · Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia
Duchamp bought a postcard of the Mona Lisa, drew a moustache on it, and added five letters that make a crude joke in French.
★ 6.5
Portrait of a Young Princess
1435 · Louvre, Paris
She sits in profile against a hedge of carnations with butterflies going past, a sprig of juniper on her sleeve punning on her name.
★ 6.5
The Ugly Duchess
1513 · National Gallery, London
Satire on old age aping youth, in a headdress two generations out of date. Tenniel used her for the Duchess in Alice in Wonderland.
★ 6.5
The Madwoman
1823 · Musee des Beaux Arts Lyon, Lyon
One of a series Géricault painted of asylum patients for a doctor studying obsession, and he gave her the seriousness of a commissioned portrait.
★ 6.5
Woman with Folded Arms (Femme aux Bras Croises)
1902 · Private collection
Her crossed arms are a wall against the world, and the blue does the rest. Picasso was painting the outcast and the destitute.
★ 5.6
Fragment of a Queen's Face
Artist unknown
1340 BC · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Only the mouth and chin survive, in honey-yellow jasper, and the break seems to concentrate the thing rather than diminish it.
★ 5.6
Young Woman Sleeping
1654 · British Museum, London
A few sweeps of brush and brown ink, most of the paper left bare, and the whole weight of a sleeping head is there.
★ 5.2
Mona Lisa (Botero)
1978 · Location unknown
Botero inflated the most famous face in the world until the little mouth vanished into acres of cheek. Affectionate rather than cruel.
★ 4.4