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.
The Last Supper (da Vinci)
1495 · Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan, Italy
Christ has just said one of them will betray him, and the shock rolls down the table. Leonardo's experimental paint began flaking in his lifetime.
★ 9.7
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
Creation of Adam
1512 · Vatican Museums, Rome
God surges out of a red cloak full of angels, and Michelangelo leaves the fingers not quite touching. The gap does the work.
★ 9.7
David
1504 · Galleria dell'Accademia (Florence), Florence
The marble block had been abandoned as flawed before Michelangelo took it, and he carved a boy who is watching Goliath, not beating him.
★ 9.6
The School of Athens
1511 · Vatican Museums, Rome
Plato and Aristotle argue at the center of a hall where Raphael gave the philosophers the faces of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Bramante.
★ 9.5
Ecstasy of Saint Teresa
1652 · Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome
Bernini staged the saint's own account of her vision as theater, lit from a window he hid above and watched by marble spectators in boxes.
★ 9.4
Pieta (Michelangelo)
1499 · Vatican Museums, Rome
The dead Christ lies across his mother's lap. Michelangelo was twenty-four, and signed the sash after hearing it credited to someone else.
★ 9.3
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
The Calling of St. Matthew
1600 · San Luigi dei Francsei, Rome
Light follows Christ's pointing hand across a dim counting-room to Matthew, who gestures at himself in disbelief. The picture made Caravaggio famous overnight.
★ 9.0
The Holy Trinity
1427 · Santa Maria Novella, Florence
The earliest surviving painting built on a single vanishing point, worked out on a wall of Santa Maria Novella with Brunelleschi's help.
★ 9.0
David
1440 · Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence
A naked boy in boots and a laurel hat rests one foot on Goliath's head, the first freestanding bronze nude since antiquity.
★ 8.9
The Last Judgment (Michelangelo)
1541 · Vatican Museums, Rome
Bartholomew holds his own flayed skin, and the sagging face on it is Michelangelo's. The nudes offended enough critics that drapery was added later.
★ 8.9
Judith Slaying Holofernes
1620 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Judith and her maid hold Holofernes down together and work the blade through his throat. Artemisia painted it a decade after her rape trial.
★ 8.8
Portrait of Pope Innocent X
1650 · Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome
Velázquez caught every wary line in the pope's face, and Innocent reportedly said it was troppo vero, too true. Francis Bacon reworked it for years.
★ 8.8
Maesta (Duccio)
1311 · Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (Siena), Siena
When Duccio finished it in 1311 the whole of Siena walked it to the cathedral in procession, with the bells going the entire way.
★ 8.8
Vitruvian Man
1492 · Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice
Leonardo fixed Vitruvius's old problem by moving the centers, so that the navel governs the circle and the groin governs the square.
★ 8.7
The Tribute Money
1428 · Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence
Three moments run in a single frame: the tax demanded, Peter pulling the coin from a fish, and Peter paying up at the right.
★ 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
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
The Tempest
1508 · Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice
A soldier, a nursing woman, and lightning over the town beyond. Nobody has explained what connects them, and Giorgione died young leaving few certain works.
★ 8.6
Emperor Justinian and His Court
Artist unknown
547 · Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna
Justinian carries the bread for the Eucharist in gold and purple, flanked by men who cast no shadow and stand on no ground.
★ 8.6
Gates of Paradise
1452 · Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (Florence), Florence
Ghiberti gave twenty-seven years to these doors, and the name comes from Michelangelo, who is supposed to have said they were fit for paradise.
★ 8.6
Expulsion from the Garden of Eden (Masaccio)
1428 · Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence
Eve throws back her head and howls while Adam hides his face, the bodies heavy and casting real shadows. Michelangelo came to study it.
★ 8.5
The Transfiguration
1520 · Vatican Museums, Rome
Raphael left it unfinished when he died in 1520, and it was hung above his body while he lay in state.
★ 8.4
The Assumption of the Virgin
1518 · Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice
Titian was barely thirty when Venice saw this go up over the Frari altar, the Virgin swept into a storm of red and blue.
★ 8.4
The Conversion of Saint Paul
1601 · Palazzo Odescalchi Balbi, Rome
Caravaggio's first attempt at the subject, turned down by the patron, before he threw out the angels and left one man, one horse and the light.
★ 8.4
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
Lamentation
1305 · Scrovegni Chapel, Padua
Two mourners sit with their backs turned to pull us in, and the angels overhead double over. Giotto frescoed it in the Arena Chapel at Padua.
★ 8.3
The Portinari Altarpiece
1476 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Three weathered shepherds crowd in to look at the newborn, and when the triptych reached Florence from Bruges the local painters took note.
★ 8.3
The Flagellation of Christ
1460 · Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino
Christ is scourged in the middle distance while three men talk in the foreground, indifferent. Nobody has settled who they are or why.
★ 8.2
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
Annunciation (Martini)
1333 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Gabriel's greeting runs toward Mary in raised gold letters and she twists away from it, her thumb still caught in her book.
★ 8.2
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
Annunciation (Fra Angelico, Florence)
1445 · San Marco Museum, Florence
Fra Angelico frescoed it at the top of the dormitory stairs, so the friars met it every time they climbed to their cells.
★ 8.0
Adoration of the Magi
1423 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
The kings arrive with a retinue of horses, hounds and a leopard, every surface tooled in gold for one of Florence's richest families.
★ 8.0
Moses
1515 · San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome
The horns come from an old mistranslation of the Hebrew for rays of light. He was meant as one figure among many on a papal tomb.
★ 8.0
The Deposition from the Cross
1528 · Santa Felicita, Florence
No cross, no ground, no sky, just a spiral of mourners in acid pink and sea-green. Florentine Mannerism starts here.
★ 8.0
Crucifixion of St. Peter
1601 · Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome
Three laborers strain to lever the cross upright with Peter nailed to it upside down. No crowd, no glory, just heavy work in the dark.
★ 7.8
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 Crucifixion of Christ
1565 · Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice
Twelve meters of wall where the whole business of execution goes on at once, one thief still being hauled upright at the side.
★ 7.8
The Fall of Man
1510 · Vatican Museums, Rome
Two moments in one field: Adam and Eve reaching for the fruit, then driven out, suddenly old. The serpent has a woman's torso.
★ 7.8
Madonna with the Long Neck
1540 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Every proportion is wrong on purpose, and a single outsized column rises behind for no reason. Parmigianino died before finishing it.
★ 7.8
The Montefeltro Altarpiece
1474 · Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, Italy
An ostrich egg hangs from the vault and pulls every sightline down. Federico is shown from the left because a tournament took his right eye.
★ 7.8
The Arrest of Christ (Kiss of Judas)
1305 · Scrovegni Chapel, Padua
Torches and spears bristle against the sky, and at the still center Judas wraps Christ in his yellow cloak and meets his eye.
★ 7.6
Ognissanti Madonna
1310 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Where Cimabue and Duccio floated their Madonnas on gold, Giotto gave his weight, a real throne, and a body that presses through the cloth.
★ 7.6
San Marco Altarpiece (Madonna and Saints)
1443 · San Marco Museum, Florence
The saints share one continuous space instead of separate compartments, and the two kneeling physicians are the name-saints of the Medici who paid.
★ 7.6
The Last Supper (Tintoretto)
1594 · Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice
The table runs off on a steep diagonal into a smoky hall where servants clear plates and the lamp smoke thickens into angels.
★ 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
Discobulus (Discus Thrower)
Artist unknown
Palazzo Massimo, Rome
Myron's bronze is lost and this is a Roman marble copy, which is why a strut props the leg the original held up unaided.
★ 7.5
Virgin Annunciate
1476 · Palazzo Abatellis, Palermo
No angel, no dove, no lily. Mary looks up from her book straight at us, because we are standing where Gabriel ought to be.
★ 7.3
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
Basket of Fruit
1599 · Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan, Italy
The leaves are curling and worm-eaten and the fig has burst. Caravaggio painted the rot as carefully as the ripeness and called it enough.
★ 7.3
Rucellai Madonna
1285 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Four and a half meters tall, the largest panel painted in its century, with six angels kneeling to steady a throne that seems to float.
★ 7.3
Annunciation (da Vinci)
1475 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
An early work, and Mary's right arm reaches further than an arm can. Gabriel's wings were studied from a real bird.
★ 7.2
Battle of San Romano
1440 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
The central panel of three, with the Florentine commander charging in a gold-and-scarlet hat on a horse turned like a carousel figure.
★ 7.2
The Dream of Constantine
1465 · San Francesco Church (Arezzo), Arezzo
An angel drops steeply from the corner and its light is the only light in the tent. One of the first true night scenes in painting.
★ 7.2
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
Madonna of the Harpies
1517 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
The little demons carved on the pedestal were taken for harpies and gave the picture its name. Del Sarto was called the faultless painter.
★ 7.1
Flight into Egypt (A. Carracci)
1604 · Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome
The holy family is tiny and the landscape does everything, which is the arrangement Poussin and Claude would build whole careers on.
★ 7.1
Adoration of the Magi (Botticelli)
1478 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
The three kings are Medici, and the young man in the saffron cloak at the right, looking straight out at us, is Botticelli.
★ 7.0
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 Deposition (Michelangelo)
1553 · Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (Florence), Florence
Michelangelo carved it for his own tomb, gave Nicodemus his own face, then took a hammer to it and broke off Christ's leg.
★ 6.9
Crucifix
1288 · Basilica di Santa Croce, Florence
The Arno flood of 1966 stripped most of the paint off it, and the ruined cross became the emblem of the whole disaster.
★ 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
Portrait of Agnolo Doni
1506 · Palazzo Pitti, Florence
Raphael had just arrived in Florence and studied the Mona Lisa hard, then did the same pose in clear light instead of smoke.
★ 6.7
Boy with a Basket of Fruit
1593 · Galleria Borghese, Rome
Fruit already spotting toward rot, painted with the same attention as the boy holding it. An early statement of what Caravaggio intended.
★ 6.6
Madonna Enthroned
1290 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Four prophets peer from arches under the throne holding scrolls that foretell the Virgin Birth, and the throne is angled to suggest depth.
★ 6.6
The Crucifixion
1311 · Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (Siena), Siena
This is the largest scene on the back of the Maesta, the Virgin fainting on one side and the crowd arguing on the other.
★ 6.6
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
Et in Arcadia Ego (Guercino)
1622 · Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome
Two shepherds stop at a skull on a plinth and read the words carved there. Guercino used the motto first, decades before Poussin.
★ 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
St. Martin Shares his Cloak with a Beggar
1326 · San Francesco Church (Assisi), Assisi
Martin cuts his soldier's cloak in half with his sword to give a beggar the other part, dressed by Simone in courtly gold.
★ 6.5
Moses and the Daughters of Jethro
1524 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Moses wades into a heap of falling nudes to drive off the shepherds, the limbs knotted almost into abstraction under a harsh light.
★ 6.5
The Beaneater
1580 · Galleria Colonna, Rome
A peasant looks up from his beans as though caught, spoon halfway to his mouth. Painted decades before Caravaggio's followers made a career of this.
★ 6.3
The Sacrifice of Isaac
1603 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Isaac is shouting under his father's hand and the ram has already arrived at the right. Caravaggio gives the scene no ceremony whatsoever.
★ 6.3
Deposition of Christ
1434 · San Marco Museum, Florence
Fra Angelico inherited a Gothic frame begun years earlier and filled it with deep sunlit space instead of gold, which is the whole story.
★ 6.3
Saint Francis Preaching to the Birds
1299 · San Francesco Church (Assisi), Assisi
Two trees, a strip of ground, and a flock that stays to listen. Giotto tells the miracle as though it simply happened.
★ 6.3
Adoration of the Magi (Giotto)
1305 · Scrovegni Chapel, Padua
Giotto had watched Halley's Comet in 1301 and painted the Star of Bethlehem as a comet, apparently the first artist to do it.
★ 6.3