The Birth of Venus
1486 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Venus arrives on a scallop shell in a fall of roses, painted on canvas at a time when almost everyone still worked on panel.
★ 9.7
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.
Winged Victory of Samothrace
Artist unknown
190 BC · Louvre, Paris
Nike lands on a warship's prow, wings still open, sea wind pressing the marble drapery flat against her striding body.
★ 9.6
Parthenon Sculptures (Elgin Marbles)
440 BC · British Museum, London
The goddesses of the east pediment wear drapery so wet it clings. Elgin took the marbles to London in 1801 and Greece wants them back.
★ 9.4
Apollo and Daphne
1624 · Galleria Borghese, Rome
Bernini was in his mid-twenties when he cut this, catching Daphne at the moment bark closes over her thigh and leaves push from her fingers.
★ 9.1
Bacchus and Ariadne
1523 · National Gallery, London
Bacchus leaps from his chariot toward Ariadne while Theseus's ship slips off the horizon, painted for a duke's private chamber in Ferrara.
★ 8.9
The Oath of the Horatii
1785 · Louvre, Paris
Three brothers salute the swords their father holds up while the women of the house collapse at the right, four years before the Revolution.
★ 8.7
Venus of Urbino
1538 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Titian woke Giorgione's sleeping Venus, brought her indoors, and had her look straight at us, probably to mark a wedding in Urbino.
★ 8.7
Venus de Milo
Artist unknown
100 BC · Louvre, Paris
A farmer on Melos dug her up in 1820, already armless, and scholars still argue over whether she held an apple, a mirror, or her drapery.
★ 8.7
Laocoon and His Sons
Artist unknown
Vatican Museums, Rome
Pliny ranked it above every other work of art, and when it came out of a Roman vineyard in 1506 Michelangelo hurried over to look.
★ 8.7
Dionysiac Frieze, Villa of the Mysteries
Artist unknown
60 BC · Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii
Life-size figures act out an initiation into the cult of Dionysus around three walls, buried by Vesuvius and dug out nearly intact.
★ 8.1
Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion
1944 · Tate Modern, London
Three flayed creatures crane and scream on orange grounds. Shown as the war ended in 1945, they made Bacon's reputation overnight.
★ 8.0
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
Death of Sardanapalus
1827 · Louvre, Paris
The king watches from his red bed while everything he owns is killed in front of him, on his own orders, before the pyre.
★ 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
Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus
1618 · Alte Pinakothek, Munich
Two horsemen haul two women up onto rearing horses, and the whole canvas spins into one great X of limbs and hooves.
★ 7.4
Bacchus
1595 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
A real Roman boy dressed up as the wine god, heavy-lidded and slightly flushed, holding out a glass while the fruit beside him bruises.
★ 7.3
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
The Triumph of Galetea
1511 · Villa Farnesina, Rome
Asked where he found so beautiful a model, Raphael said he worked instead from a certain idea of beauty he carried in his head.
★ 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
The Intervention of the Sabine Women
1799 · Louvre, Paris
Hersilia throws herself between the two armies with her arms out. David painted it after the Terror, arguing for reconciliation instead of oaths.
★ 7.1
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
1555 · Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels
Two pale legs disappear into the sea in the corner while the ploughman keeps ploughing. Auden wrote a poem about exactly that indifference.
★ 7.1
Venus and Adonis
1553 · El Prado, Madrid
Venus twists round to hold him back and he pulls away toward the hunt that will kill him. Cupid sleeps in the shade, useless.
★ 7.0
Icarus
1947 · National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh
A black figure with a red dot for a heart falls through blue, cut from paper because Matisse could no longer stand at an easel.
★ 6.9
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
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
Narcissus
1599 · Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome
Narcissus and his reflection close into a circle around a band of black water, and nothing else exists in the picture.
★ 6.8
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
A Satyr Mourning over a Nymph
1495 · National Gallery, London
A satyr kneels and touches the dead woman with extraordinary gentleness while her dog keeps watch and wading birds stand along the shore.
★ 6.7
Metamorphosis of Narcissus
1937 · Tate Modern, London
The kneeling figure on the left is the same shape as the stone hand on the right, holding an egg with a flower coming out.
★ 6.7
Sleeping Hermaphroditos
Artist unknown
Louvre, Paris
You see a sleeping woman until you walk around to the other side. Bernini added the mattress, folds and all, in 1620.
★ 6.7
Danae
1531 · Galleria Borghese, Rome
Cupid pulls back the sheet while two putti sharpen their arrows on a whetstone at the foot of the bed. Painted for the Duke of Mantua.
★ 6.6
Oedipus and the Sphinx
1808 · Louvre, Paris
Oedipus leans in close to answer the riddle, and a previous contestant's foot is lying at the bottom edge as a warning.
★ 6.5
Danae
1907 · Private collection
Zeus arrives as a stream of gold coins and ornament between her thighs, and Klimt makes no attempt to be subtle about it.
★ 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
Parnassus
1497 · Louvre, Paris
The Muses dance to Apollo's lyre while Venus's cuckolded husband fumes at his forge off to the left. Painted for Isabella d'Este's study.
★ 6.1
Perseus Rescuing Andromeda
1513 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
The sea-monster is part fish and part beast and thoroughly invented, and some of the onlookers on the shore have started playing music.
★ 6.1
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
Leda and the Swan (Correggio)
1532 · Gemaldegalerie, Berlin
The story runs across the canvas in stages, arrival to departure. A later owner cut Leda's head out in disgust and it was repainted.
★ 5.7
Ascanius Shooting the Stag of Sylvia
1682 · Ashmolean, Oxford, England
Ascanius draws his bow on a tame stag, the shot that starts a war in the Aeneid, and Claude paints it as a calm golden evening.
★ 5.7
Circe and Her Lovers in a Landscape
1525 · National Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia
An enchantress sits in a wood ringed by deer, dogs, owls and a stork, which may be men she has transformed. Dossi leaves it unresolved.
★ 5.7
The Judgment of Paris
1527 · Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen
Paris turns up as a German knight in plate armor and the three goddesses wear nothing but jewels and improbable hats.
★ 5.7
Leda Atomica
1949 · Teatro-Museo Dali, Figueres
Nothing in the picture touches anything else. Dalí built it on the physics of the atom, where matter is mostly empty space.
★ 5.6
Neptune and Triton
1623 · Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Neptune drives his trident down to still the waters. It was made for a fountain, so real water once finished the sculpture.
★ 5.4
The Birth and Triumph of Venus
1740 · Nationalmuseum, Stockholm
Venus in a pearly sea with nymphs, tritons and putti all around, made entirely to delight and not at all to instruct.
★ 5.2
Hercules and Lichas
1802 · Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome
Hercules, poisoned and raving, grabs the boy by the hair and one leg and throws him. Canova almost never carved anything this violent.
★ 5.2
Apollo and Daphne
1525 · Galleria Borghese, Rome
Dossi swapped Apollo's ancient lyre for a modern viol, and Daphne is already sprouting into laurel in the far distance.
★ 4.8
Romulus and Remus Given Shelter by Faustulus
1643 · Louvre, Paris
The shepherd carries the twins home to his wife with the she-wolf still nearby. Rome's founding myth as a foundling story.
★ 4.8
Leda and the Swan
1882 · The Barnes Foundation (Philadelphia), Philadelphia
The swan nips her hand and Leda barely reacts. Cézanne cared about the planes of the body, not the story.
★ 4.8