The Garden of Earthly Delights
1505 · El Prado, Madrid
Three panels run from Eden to hell, with a whole naked humanity climbing into giant fruit in between. Nobody has settled what it means.
★ 10.0
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16th century
1501 – 1600
Showing 123 artworks from the 16th century
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
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
Hunters in the Snow
1565 · Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Three hunters come home over the hill with one thin catch while villagers skate below. Bruegel painted it for a series on the months.
★ 9.4
Isenheim Altarpiece
1516 · Unterlinden Museum, Colmar
Christ's body hangs green and pocked with sores, painted for a hospital whose patients saw their own ravaged flesh.
★ 9.3
Pine Trees (Shorin-zu byobu)
1595 · Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo
A few pines loom and dissolve on two screens where the bare paper does the work of mist. Japan's finest ink painting, by most accounts.
★ 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 Court of Gayumars
1525 · Aga Khan Museum, Toronto
Hundreds of tiny faces hide in the swirling rocks around Persia's first king, painted for a royal copy of the Shahnama made for Shah Tahmasp.
★ 9.0
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 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
The Burial of the Count of Orgaz
1586 · Church of Santo Tome, Toledo, Ohio
Two saints lower a nobleman into his grave while his soul slips through a tear in the sky. The mourners are El Greco's own neighbors.
★ 8.7
Sistine Madonna
1512 · Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden
Two bored cherubs lean on the frame at the bottom, and they floated free of the altarpiece long ago onto everything else.
★ 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
Melencolia I
1514 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
A winged figure sits with her compass idle among abandoned tools, and no print in history has drawn more scholarly argument.
★ 8.6
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
The Ambassadors
1533 · National Gallery, London
Two men pose with globes, sundials and a lute with a broken string, and a smear on the floor turns into a skull from the side.
★ 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