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
Browse by time · decade
1520s
1520 – 1529
Showing 30 works across all media from the 1520s
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 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 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
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
Queen Mother Pendant Mask (Iyoba)
Artist unknown
1520 · British Museum, London
The oba wore it at his hip, its crown made of tiny Portuguese heads. A British expedition looted it from Benin in 1897.
★ 7.9
The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb
1521 · Kunstmuseum, Basel
A corpse in a box barely wider than itself, with no hint of resurrection. Dostoevsky saw it in Basel and said it could destroy faith.
★ 7.4
Portrait of Erasmus of Rotterdam
1523 · National Gallery, London
Erasmus rests his hands on a book whose edge is inscribed The Labors of Hercules, his own joke about how much scholarship costs.
★ 7.4
The Four Apostles
1526 · Alte Pinakothek, Munich
Dürer gave the panels to the Nuremberg council with Luther's words inscribed below, warning the city's rulers against false prophets. His last great work.
★ 7.3
Portrait of Desiderius Erasmus
1523 · Louvre, Paris
Erasmus is caught mid-sentence with the pen still moving. He sent portraits like this across Europe as a kind of intellectual calling card.
★ 7.2
Portrait of Sir Thomas More
1527 · The Frick Collection, New York City
Holbein arrived in England on a letter from Erasmus and painted More at the height of his power. Within a few years More was executed.
★ 7.1
On the Bondage of the Will
1525 · 328 pages
Erasmus said the will helps choose salvation. Luther answered that it is a beast ridden by God or Satan, never choosing its rider. Protestants have argued about grace on his terms ever since.
★ 6.8
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
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
A Mighty Fortress is Our God · 1529
Christ Carrying the Cross (Lotto)
1526 · Louvre, Paris
Lotto crops the Passion down to one tear-streaked head at the surface, with soldiers' hands coming in from the edges of the frame.
★ 5.4
Christ Taking Leave of His Mother
1520 · National Gallery, London
The episode appears in no Gospel at all, and Altdorfer nearly buries the figures under a forest of enormous trees and luminous sky.
★ 5.2
The Rest on the Flight to Egypt with Saint Francis
1520 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Joseph reaches up to pull down dates from a palm while Saint Francis kneels at the side, added for the chapel that ordered it.
★ 5.2
Portrait of a Man, Aged 93
1521 · Albertina, Vienna
An inscription gives his age as ninety-three. Dürer drew him in Antwerp and used the head soon after for a Saint Jerome.
★ 4.8