Masterpieces

The Lady with the Ermine — The Milan Portrait

The Last Supper — Milan’s Masterpiece

The Pietà — Michelangelo’s early masterpiece

“Spring” — Botticelli’s “Garden of Venus”

“The Slander of Apelles” — Botticelli’s Bitter Work

The Birth of Venus — Botticelli’s Pagan Dream

The Mona Lisa — the world’s most famous smile

The School of Athens — Raphael’s Humanist Masterpiece

The Sistine Madonna — Raphael’s Celestial Vision

The Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione — The Pinnacle of Portraiture According to Raphael

David—Michelangelo’s marble hero

The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel—Michelangelo’s “Heaven”

The Miracle of the Slave — Tintoretto

The Assumption of the Virgin — Titian

The Venus of Urbino — Titian

Charles V on Horseback — Titian

The Calling of Saint Matthew—When Caravaggio Puts God in a Tavern

The Crucifixion — Tintoretto

The Last Supper — Tintoretto

The Wedding at Cana — Veronese

The Feast in the House of Levi — Veronese

The Triumph of Venice — Veronese

Saint Jerome Writing — Caravaggio to His Savior

The Night Watch — The Revolution in Group Portraiture

The Shepherds of Arcadia — Death in Paradise, by Poussin

Bathsheba at Her Bath — Hendrickje, Rembrandt’s Model and Muse

“Girl with a Pearl Earring” — the “Mona Lisa of the North”

The Lacemaker — Vermeer’s Smallest Masterpiece

The Rape of the Sabine Women — Poussin’s Controlled Chaos

The Sower — the painting by Millet that Van Gogh painted throughout his life

Liberty Leading the People — Delacroix’s iconic painting

The Death of Sardanapalus — Delacroix’s Romantic Scandal

A Funeral in Ornans — The Manifesto of Realism

The Grande Odalisque — Ingres’s Ideal Line

The Portrait of Monsieur Bertin — Ingres’s Triumphant Bourgeois

The Last Voyage of the Temeraire — Turner (1839)

The Great Wave off Kanagawa — Hokusai

The Slave Trader — Turner

Rain, Steam, and Speed — Turner (1844)

“Starry Night” — A Study of a Sky Imagined by Van Gogh

The Potato Eaters — the work Van Gogh defended throughout his life

The Angelus — How a 55-cm Painting Turned the French Art Market on Its Head

Impression, Sunrise—the painting that derisively christened a century

Poppies — the painting in which Monet took his first step toward abstraction

“La Bergère” — the Pissarro painting that took twenty-nine years to sell

Boulevard Montmartre, a Winter Morning — How Pissarro’s Eye Condition Led to His Urban Paintings

Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? — the work a man painted so he could die

La Belle Angèle — the portrait that its subject rejected but that Degas hailed as a masterpiece

“Luncheon on the Grass” — the painting that made everything possible

Olympia — Victorine, Laure, and the Scandal of the 1865 Salon

Le Berceau — the forerunner of Impressionism

Eugène Manet on the Isle of Wight — the painter’s portrait of her husband

Bathing the Child — Motherhood Reimagined Through Japanese Prints

Little Girl in a Blue Armchair — The Painting of Scandal and Freedom

Absinthe — The Visual Representation of Modern Solitude

The Fourteen-Year-Old Little Dancer — The Ultimate Scandal in Modern Sculpture

“The Dance at the Moulin de la Galette” — the icon of joyful Impressionism

Young Girls at the Piano — Renoir’s First Official Commission

The Card Players — Cézanne’s Silent Gravity

Mount Sainte-Victoire — A Lifelong Obsession

At the Moulin Rouge — Night Life According to Toulouse-Lautrec

Moulin Rouge, La Goulue — The Poster That Pioneered an Art Form

La Grande Jatte — The Manifesto of Pointillism

The Circus — Seurat’s final, unfinished work

The Portrait of Félix Fénéon — Signac’s Boldness

The Painter’s Studio—Courbet’s Real Allegory

The Origin of the World — Courbet’s Utter Audacity

The Floor Planers — Caillebotte’s Modern Realism

A Street in Paris on a Rainy Day — Caillebotte’s Urban Masterpiece

The Bridge of Europe — Iron and the Modern City by Caillebotte

The Sick Child — Munch

Madonna — Munch

The Scream — Munch

Dance — Matisse’s Primitive Round Dance

“The Woman with the Hat” — the painting that gave rise to Fauvism

The Entrance to the Port of Marseille — Signac’s Light

Death and the Maiden — Schiele’s Heart-Wrenching Farewell

The Family — Schiele’s Moving Testament

Seated Male Nude — Schiele’s “Ecorché” Self-Portrait

The Kiss — Klimt’s Golden Icon

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I — Klimt’s “Woman in Gold”