Guernica
1937 · Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid
A screaming horse, a mother with her dead child, all in grey. Picasso painted it in weeks after German bombers leveled a Basque town.
★ 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.
Terracotta Army
Artist unknown
210 BC · Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum, Xi'an
Thousands of life-size clay soldiers in battle formation, no two faces alike, guarding an emperor's tomb since 210 BC.
★ 9.6
The Surrender of Breda
1635 · El Prado, Madrid
The Spanish general stops the defeated Dutchman from kneeling and lays a hand on his shoulder. Spaniards still call the picture The Lances.
★ 8.8
The Battle of Alexander at Issus
1529 · Alte Pinakothek, Munich
Tens of thousands of tiny soldiers fight under a sky that curves like the whole earth. Painted while the Ottomans were pressing on Vienna.
★ 8.1
Bayeux Tapestry
Artist unknown
1077 · Musee de la Tapisserie de Bayeux, Bayeux
Seventy meters of wool telling the conquest of England like a strip cartoon. Not a tapestry at all, and probably stitched by English hands.
★ 7.9
The Night
1919 · Kunstsammlung, Dusseldorf
A family is tortured in a room too small for it, painted in Germany in 1919 with the war and the revolution just finished.
★ 7.2
The Battle of San Romano (Louvre)
1435 · Louvre, Paris
Broken lances lie along the receding lines of a perspective grid. Vasari said Uccello sat up all night muttering about how sweet it was.
★ 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 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
The Veteran in a New Field
1865 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
A Union jacket lies discarded in the corner while the man who wore it swings a scythe through wheat, which is the whole point.
★ 6.7
Europe After the Rain II
1942 · Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford
Ernst made the eaten-away textures by pressing and lifting paint, working on it while fleeing occupied Europe for America.
★ 6.5
The Charnel House
1945 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
Bodies lie heaped and bound under a kitchen table, in grey. Picasso left it unfinished, painted after the camps were opened.
★ 6.5
We are Making a New World
1918 · Imperial War Museum, London
Splintered stumps and shell craters under a cold sun, and Nash gave it that title on purpose, as an official British war artist.
★ 6.5