Leonardo Da Vinci

Mona Lisa (La Gioconda)

Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa (also known as the Gioconda) is perhaps the most famous work of art in the world. Believed to be Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo, it was painted between 1503-1506 on a poplar panel. Now in the Louvre Museum in Paris, it was purchased by King Francis I of France. The painting's appeal lies in the mysterious expression of its subject, its complex composition and innovative techniques such as sfumato, which avoids sharp contours.
"Mona Lisa" refers to t...

Vincent Van Gogh

Starry Night (New York, MoMA)

"The Starry Night" is one of Vincent van Gogh's most renowned paintings, depicting a nighttime view from his sanitarium room window in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Although painted from memory during the day, it's based on a real view which Van Gogh sketched and painted in multiple variations. The painting has resided at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City since 1941.
In 1888, Van Gogh painted "Starry Night Over the Rhone," mentioning in his writings the comfort he derived from painting the sta...

Edvard Munch

The Scream

"The Scream" is a renowned composition by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, created between 1893 and 1910 in four versions using paint, pastels, and lithographs. It depicts a figure with a distressed expression against a turbulent orange sky, set in Oslofjord, viewed from Ekeberg, Oslo. Originally titled "Der Schrei der Natur" (The Scream of Nature), it's become one of art's most emblematic images, symbolizing human anxiety. Munch was inspired by a sunset that turned the clouds "blood red", leading...

Sandro Botticelli

The Birth Of Venus

Grant Wood

American Gothic

American Gothic is a painting by Grant Wood in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Wood's inspiration came from what is now known as the American Gothic House, and a decision to paint the house along with "the kind of people I fancied should live in that house." The painting shows a farmer standing beside his spinster daughter. The figures were modeled by the artist's sister and their dentist. The woman is dressed in a colonial print apron evoking 19th-century Americana, and the coup...

Pablo Picasso

Three Musicians

Three Musicians is a Synthetic Cubist painting, a perfect example of Pablo Picasso’s work and mastery. The frame has within it three musicians, two of which are dressed as characters from the popular Italian theatre Commedia dell'arte in a box room, resembling their stage. The canvas has a Pierrot, a Harlequin and the third is a monk. The Pierrot, said to represent Guillaume Apollinaire. dressed in a blue and white suit, playing a clarinet; the harlequin, s common stand-in for Picasso, dressed i...

Pablo Picasso

The Young Ladies of Avignon

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon, and originally titled The Brothel of Avignon) is a large oil painting created in 1907 by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881–1973). The work portrays five nude female prostitutesfrom a brothel on Carrer d'Avinyó (Avinyó Street) in Barcelona. Each figure is depicted in a disconcerting confrontational manner and none are conventionally feminine. The women appear as slightly menacing and rendered with angular and disjointed body shapes. Two...

Michelangelo Buonarroti

The Creation of Adam

The Creation of Man is one of the most notable artworks from the Renaissance period, it is a fresco painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, commissioned by Pope Julius II. The fresco illustrates a passage from the bible, “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him" (Gen. 1:27) and portrays God as a bearded man with a cloak draping him and his hand extending to touch Adam's left hand but only their fingers meet in between. With God are twelve figures that have been...

Johannes Vermeer

The Girl with a Pearl Earring

The artwork Girl with a Pearl Earring, or "Het Meisje with de Parel" in Dutch, is one of Johannes Vermeer's (Dutch Painter) masterworks and has a pearl earring as a focal point, as the name suggests. The picture is now housed at The Hague's Mauritshuis museum. It's also known as or "the Mona Lisa of the North" or "the Dutch Mona Lisa".
According to more contemporary Vermeer research, the painting is a 'Tronie.' The term 'Tronie' refers to paintings from the 17th century in which facial expressio...

Gustave Klimt

The kiss

The Kiss was the last painting from Gustav Klimt’s Golden Period, during which he used gold leaf in his work. Klimt lived a Bohemian lifestyle and topics of sex and sensuality was common in his work, much to the publics disdain. Even The Kiss was considered pornographic even though the two figures were both completely clothed. The painting shows a couple in a loving embrace, the man’s face is not seen but he presses his face on the lady’s cheek, giving her a kiss. His form is large and he wears ...

Salvador Dali

The Disintegration of Persistence of Memory, 1952-54

La desintegración de la persistencia de la memoria or The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (oil on canvas, c. 1952 to 1954), is a painting by the Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí. It is an oil on canvas re-creation of the artist's famous 1931 work The Persistence of Memory, and measures a diminutive 25.4 × 33 cm. In this version, the landscape from the original work has been flooded with water. Disintegration depicts what is occurring both above and below the water's surface. The land...

Diego Velazquez

Las Meninas or The Family of Philip IV

Francisco De Goya

The Third of May, 1808 The Execution of the Defenders of Madrid

The Third of May 1808 (also known as El tres de mayo de 1808 en Madrid, or Los fusilamientos de la montaña del Príncipe Pío, or Los fusilamientos del tres de mayo) is a painting completed in 1814 by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya, now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. In the work, Goya sought to commemorate Spanish resistance to Napoleon's armies during the occupation of 1808. Along with its companion piece of the same size, The Second of May 1808 (or The Charge of the Mamelukes), it was commi...

Claude Monet

Water Lilies

Water Lilies (or Nymphéas, pronounced: [nɛ̃.fe.a]) is a series of approximately 250 oil paintings by French Impressionist Claude Monet (1840–1926). The paintings depict Monet's flower garden at Giverny and were the main focus of Monet's artistic production during the last thirty years of his life. Many of the works were painted while Monet suffered from cataracts.

The paintings are on display at museums all over the world, including the Musée Marmottan Monet and the musée d'Orsay in Paris, ...

Francisco De Goya

The Third of May 1808

Edouard Manet

Olympia

Though Manet's Le déjeuner sur l'herbe sparked controversy in 1863, his Olympia (1863) stirred an even bigger uproar when it was first exhibited at the 1865 Paris Salon. What shocked contemporary audiences was not Olympia's nudity, nor even the presence of her fully clothed maid, but her confrontational gaze and a number of details identifying her as a demi-mondaine or courtesan. These include the orchid in her hair, her bracelet, pearl earrings and the oriental shawl on which she lies. The blac...

Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi)

The Calling of Saint Matthew

The Calling of Saint Matthew is a masterpiece by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, depicting the moment at which Jesus Christ inspires Matthew to follow him. It was completed in 1599-1600 for the Contarelli Chapel in the church of the French congregation, San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, where it remains today. It hangs alongside two other paintings of Matthew by Caravaggio, The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew (painted around the same time as the Calling) and The Inspiration of Saint Matthew (1602)

Jackson Pollock

Number 1, 1949

No. 5, 1948 is a painting by Jackson Pollock, an American painter known for his contributions to the abstract expressionist movement. The painting was done on an 8' × 4' sheet of fiberboard, with thick amounts of brown and yellow paint drizzled on top of it, forming a nest-like appearance. It was originally owned by Samuel Irving Newhouse, Jr. and displayed at the Museum of Modern Art before being sold to David Geffen and then allegedly to David Martinez in 2006 (though the supposed sale of this...

Andy Warhol

Marilyn Diptych

Marilyn Monroe died in August 1962.
In the following weeks, Warhol made this masterpiece which contains fifty images of Marilyn, all based on the same publicity photograph from the 1953 film Niagara. Considered an iconic symbol of pop art, Marilyn Diptych was named the third most influential piece of modern art in a survey by The Guardian.

Georges Pierre Seurat

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte – 1884 (French: Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte - 1884) is one of Georges Seurat's most famous works, and is an example of pointillism.

Georges Seurat spent over two years painting A Sunday Afternoon, focusing meticulously on the landscape of the park. He reworked the original as well as completed numerous preliminary drawings and oil sketches. He would go and sit in the park and make numerous sketches of the various figu...

Hieronymus Bosch

The Garden of Earthly Delights

Hieronymus Bosch was a Northern Netherlandish and Renaissance painter. Not much is known about the artist but we can observe the influence of religion in his works which are full of Christian and biblical allusions. The exterior doors of the Triptych display the 'third day of creation, a biblical milestone. When opened, the painting is divided into three panels, the two side panels show the images of a paradise and hell respectively and in between is an enormous garden a 'false paradise’ – a pla...

Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo - `The Two Fridas`

Jan Van Eyck

Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife

Peter Paul Rubens

Descent from the Cross

The Elevation of the Cross is a triptych panel painting, depicting many rippling-muscled men lifting Jesus in the Cross. This painting clearly shows the influence of Michelangelo, Caravaggio, and Tintoretto, all of whose paintings influenced Rubens a great deal. Rubens completed the painting after returning to Flanders from Italy, after the death of his mother in 1608. This painting, along with The Descent of the Cross, was taken from Belgium by Napoleon, but they were later returned at the end ...

Rembrandt Van Rijn

Night Watch

The Night Watch or The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq (Dutch: De Nachtwacht) is the common name of one of the most famous works by Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn.
The painting may be more properly titled The Company of captain Frans Banning Cocq and lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch preparing to march out. It is prominently displayed in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, as the best known painting in its collection. The Night Watch is one of the most famous paintings in the w...