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
Browse by time · decade
1590s
1590 – 1599
Showing 185 works across all media from the 1590s
Romeo and Juliet
1597 · 281 pages
At a party in Verona two teenagers from feuding families meet, marry the next day, and are gone inside a week. Everything they say to each other still sounds newly invented.
★ 8.1
Cypress Trees
1590 · Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo
One ancient cypress sprawls across the screen against solid gold, painted by the man who decorated the castles of Nobunaga and Hideyoshi.
★ 8.0
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
The Journey to the West
1592 · 272 pages
A monkey born from stone storms heaven, is pinned under a mountain for five hundred years, then escorts a monk to India for Buddhist scriptures. Eighty-one disasters later it is still funny.
★ 7.4
A Midsummer Night's Dream
1596 · 304 pages
Four Athenians run into the woods to escape a forced marriage, a fairy potion lands on the wrong eyelids, and a weaver acquires a donkey's head. Shakespeare makes desire look gloriously stupid.
★ 7.4
Henry V
1599 · 292 pages
Outnumbered in France, a young king talks his army into fighting at Agincourt, promising that whoever survives will remember the day forever. After the battle he reads out the names of the dead.
★ 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
Henry IV, Part One
1597 · 274 pages
Falstaff is the greatest comic creation in English, a fat knight who lies about everything, and Prince Hal wastes his youth drinking with him while rebellion gathers against his father the king.
★ 7.2
The Merchant of Venice
1598 · 288 pages
In Venice a merchant borrows from Shylock, a Jewish moneylender he has spat on, pledging a pound of his flesh. Shylock asks whether a Jew does not bleed, and the comedy never recovers.
★ 7.2
Much Ado About Nothing
1599 · 246 pages
Beatrice and Benedick insult each other so expertly that their friends trick each into believing the other is secretly in love. Their war of words gave English comedy its model for courtship.
★ 7.2
Henry IV, Part Two
1599 · 338 pages
Falstaff ages and the king dies while Prince Hal waits for the crown. Shakespeare wrote no colder scene than the new king telling his old tavern friend that he does not know him.
★ 7.0