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