The world’s most famous paintings – and where to find them

Among the world’s most famous paintings are Leonardo’s Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, Rembrandt’s The Night Watch, Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, van Gogh’s The Starry Night, Munch’s The Scream and Picasso’s Guernica. Most hang in a handful of cities: Paris, Florence, Amsterdam, Madrid, Vienna, London and New York. Here are twenty of them in chronological order, with where to see them.

Facts

The Renaissance: Florence, Milan, Rome and London

The oldest painting in the selection is The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck from 1434, a couple in a room in Bruges with a convex mirror on the back wall. It hangs in the National Gallery in London. The Birth of Venus by Botticelli, from c. 1485, shows the goddess of love on her scallop shell and is in the Uffizi in Florence.

Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper of 1498 is on the wall of the monastery refectory at Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. Visits are short and take place in small groups, so the ticket must be booked well in advance. His Mona Lisa, begun in 1503, hangs behind protective glass in the Louvre in Paris. Read the guide to the Mona Lisa before you go.

In the Vatican are two of the most famous wall paintings: Raphael’s School of Athens and Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The guide Art to see in Rome shows how to fit in both.

North of the Alps and in Spain

Pieter Bruegel’s Hunters in the Snow of 1565, with weary hunters heading down towards a valley of skaters, is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Rembrandt’s The Night Watch of 1642 is the principal work in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The name came later, when the varnish had darkened; the scene actually takes place in daytime.

Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, from c. 1665, is not a commissioned portrait but a study of a face and a turban. It hangs in the Mauritshuis in The Hague, not in Amsterdam, as many believe. Velázquez’s Las Meninas of 1656 is in the Prado in Madrid; the guide Las Meninas explained goes through who is who.

The 19th century: revolution, light and anxiety

Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, from c. 1818, hangs in the Hamburger Kunsthalle, and Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People of 1830 in the Louvre. Monet’s Impression, Sunrise of 1872, which gave Impressionism its name, is in the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris.

Van Gogh’s The Starry Night of 1889 hangs in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and one of his Sunflowers of 1888 in the National Gallery in London; he painted several versions. Munch’s The Scream exists in several versions, and the painted one from 1893 hangs in the Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo. Read the guide to The Starry Night for more.

A wave in many copies

One of the best-known images in the world is not a painting but a colour woodblock print. The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai, from c. 1831, was printed in large editions, and copies are in many museums, including the Metropolitan in New York and the British Museum in London. Because woodblock prints fade in light, they are shown only for short periods. Read more in the guide to ukiyo-e.

The 20th century: gold, war and melting clocks

Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss of 1908, a couple in a gold-glittering robe, hangs in the Belvedere in Vienna. Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory of 1931 is much smaller than most people think and is in MoMA in New York. Picasso’s Guernica of 1937, almost eight metres wide, was painted after the bombing of the Basque town and was first shown at the World’s Fair in Paris. It came to Spain in 1981 and today hangs in the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid. More works from the century can be found in the guide The most important artworks of the 20th century.

Why did these ones become so famous?

Quality is not enough as an explanation. The Mona Lisa was well known for a long time, but it became world famous only when it was stolen from the Louvre in 1911. The picture was in newspapers all over the world for more than two years, until it was recovered in Florence in 1913. The Scream was stolen from the museum in Oslo in 1994 and has since been one of the most reproduced images of modern anxiety. The Night Watch, The Birth of Venus and The Starry Night have been printed in countless school books, on posters and on mugs.

What the paintings also have in common is that they are easy to recognise and that there is a riddle or a story around them: the smile, the mirror, who stands where. That is why it pays to read up before a visit. In the app every work has a page of its own with facts and what to look for, and on the map you can see where they hang.

Where they hang

Exercise

In which city does Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring hang?