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
The Complete Plays
1593 · 702 pages
Faustus signs away his soul for twenty-four years of power, Tamburlaine the shepherd burns his way across Asia, and Barabas poisons a convent. Marlowe gave English drama its first tragic grandeur.
★ 6.9
Julius Caesar
1599 · 288 pages
Brutus is persuaded that killing his friend will save the republic. Antony stands over the body, says he comes to bury Caesar and not to praise him, and turns Rome around.
★ 6.8
Richard III
1592 · 448 pages
Richard tells the audience in his first speech that he means to be a villain, then makes them accomplices. He courts a widow beside the corpse of the king he murdered.
★ 6.8
The Cardsharps
1594 · Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth
One boy has a card hidden behind his back and his older partner signals the count on his fingers. It got Caravaggio his first patron.
★ 6.8
Narcissus
1599 · Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome
Narcissus and his reflection close into a circle around a band of black water, and nothing else exists in the picture.
★ 6.8
Boy with a Basket of Fruit
1593 · Galleria Borghese, Rome
Fruit already spotting toward rot, painted with the same attention as the boy holding it. An early statement of what Caravaggio intended.
★ 6.6
The Fortune Teller (Caravaggio)
1595 · Louvre, Paris
She reads his palm and takes the ring off his finger while she does it, and he is too busy looking at her to notice.
★ 6.1
A jest's prosperity lies in the ear Of him that hears it, never in the tongue Of him that makes it.
Love's Labour's Lost · 1597
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
The Merchant of Venice · 1598