Public Domain // Wikimedia Eatables

l famous paintings and the stories behind them

A picture is worth a thousand words, and like texts, art is ofttimes meant to exist "read" through disquisitional deconstruction. Paintings can be far more complicated than they announced at first glance and difficult to decipher if the viewer doesn't speak the aforementioned tongue. Iconography—the symbolic linguistic communication of a given piece of work of art—can be sophisticated and complex, reflecting the collective consciousness or drawn from the artist's personal experience. Why would someone eschew the written word in favor of paint and canvas? 20th-century American creative person Edward Hopper appears to have had the respond. "If I could say it in words," he said, "there would be no reason to paint."

The stories told by works of art—and nigh them—are, quite literally, the stuff of novels. Johannes Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring" inspired the novel of the same name by writer Tracy Chevalier. The book was later turned into a film starring Scarlett Johansson. Almost 40 years after Irving Stone wrote his biographical account of the life of Michelangelo, Dan Chocolate-brown's "The Da Vinci Code" turned the life and piece of work of the Renaissance master into a romp through the preceding millennia.

September 2019 heralded the broad cinematic release of the latest exponent of the genre: "The Goldfinch," based on Donna Tartt's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. The book centers effectually the fictionalized theft of Dutch artist Carel Fabritius' eponymous painting afterwards an explosion rocks New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ironically, Fabritius died in a devastating gunpowder explosion in 1654, shortly after completing his about memorable work. The success enjoyed by Tartt's book elevated "The Goldfinch" to rock star condition, mobbed by crowds determined to catch a glimpse of the tiny bird tethered by a frail chain. [Note: Fabritius' painting is non featured in Stacker's gallery.]

Stacker curated this list of some of the world'southward most famous images and the fascinating stories backside them. Scroll through the list and find out which paintings scandalized Paris, were looted by the Nazis, and inspired a hitting Broadway musical.

You may also like: The 51 women who accept won the Nobel Prize

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Christina's World

- Artist: Andrew Wyeth
- Year: 1948

"Christina's World" continues to fascinate more than lxx years afterward it was first painted. The faceless woman lying on the basis was Anna Christina Olson, the neighbour and muse of Pennsylvania artist Andrew Wyeth. While the painting has all the hallmarks of a pastoral, Olson's pose is not ane of romantic languor; she suffered from a musculus-wasting disorder—possibly Charcot-Marie-Tooth affliction—and was known to drag herself across the family homestead.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

Arnolfini Portrait

- Creative person: Jan van Eyck
- Year: 1434

Painted by Dutch master January van Eyck, this early on Netherlandish panel painting is shrouded in symbolism. The elegantly dressed couple are thought to be Giovanni di Nicolao di Arnolfini, and his wife, Costanza Trenta, wealthy Italians living in Bruges. The unusual limerick begs several questions. Does the painting celebrate the couple'southward wedding ceremony, or commemorate another result, such equally a shrewdly negotiated matrimony contract? Was the helpmate significant, or simply dressed in the latest fashion? And what are the mysterious figures depicted in the convex mirror? The unorthodox placement of van Eyck's signature directly above it suggests one of the men may be the creative person himself.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

American Gothic

- Artist: Grant Wood
- Year: 1930

Grant Wood spent years searching for inspiration in Europe. The piece of work that would make him famous, however, was painted afterward his return to the heartland. A national icon and leading exponent of regionalism, "American Gothic" depicts what appears to be a Depression-era farmer and his weathered wife. Grant intended the couple to represent begetter and daughter; in reality, they were neither. The man holding the pitchfork was Wood'due south dentist, Byron McKeeby, flanked by the artist's sister, Nan Wood Graham.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

Cyclops

- Artist: Odilon Redon
- Year: 1914

For those not familiar with the effectively points of Greek mythology, the dream-like field of study of Odilon Redon's "Cyclops" may non be easily identifiable. Polyphemus, the behemothic that is sporting the solitary eyeball, peers over a rocky outcropping at the object of his desire—the nymph Galatea. Derived from Homer's "Odyssey," the tale was a popular trope among French symbolists, including Redon'due south contemporary, poet and painter Gustave Moreau.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

Expiry of Marat

- Artist: Jacques-Louis David
- Year: 1793

The pallid effigy bleeding out in Jacques-Louis David's 1793 neoclassical masterpiece is none other than Jean-Paul Marat, the French revolutionary famously stabbed to death in the bathroom by political antagonist Charlotte Corday. David gravitated toward radical politics, adjustment himself with the Jacobin ideologies of Marat and Maximilien Robespierre. In post-revolutionary French republic, he rose to the position of court painter nether Napoléon Bonaparte.

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MatthiasKabel // WikimediaCommons

Frescoes, Villa of the Mysteries

- Artist: Unknown
- Yr: c. first century B.C.

In 1909, archeologists working in the ancient Roman urban center of Pompeii unearthed a villa buried under 30 feet of volcanic ash. Preserved inside was a room, measuring approximately 225 square feet, containing a serial of beautiful yet inexplainable frescoes. The images depict more than than ii dozen, life-size figures. At the center of the activeness is a clothesless woman, shown flogged in ane scene while dancing and playing the cymbals in another. Most scholars hold that the wheel represents a Dionysian initiation cult.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

Girl with a Pearl Earring

- Artist: Johannes Vermeer
- Year: 1665

A masterpiece of the Dutch Golden Age, Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring" has transfixed viewers with her wistful gaze e'er since the painting resurfaced in the late 19th century. Little, nonetheless, is known about the young woman who modeled for the portrait. It has been suggested that the girl was Vermeer'south daughter or mistress. While this may be the case, the image wasn't intended to correspond an actual person. The turban worn by the sitter indicates that the piece was intended as a "tronie," an arcadian paradigm cloaked in exotic wearable.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe

- Artist: Edouard Manet
- Year: 1863

Edouard Manet's sensational "Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe" ("The Luncheon on the Grass") scandalized 19th-century Paris, not for its stark nudity, but because it bankrupt with a long-standing tradition of depicting nudes in classical settings. The Paris Salon rejected the painting, declaring information technology obscene. Victorine-Louise Meurent, the naked woman staring unapologetically at the viewer, was assumed by many to exist a local prostitute; she was actually a sought-after Parisian artist'due south model and an accomplished painter in her ain right.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

Ophelia

- Artist: Sir John Everett Millais
- Twelvemonth: 1851-52

Pre-Raphaelite John Everett Millais, in truthful Pre-Raphaelite mode, painted direct from life whenever possible. Much of the exuberant leaf institute in "Ophelia" can exist establish in Shakespeare's "Village" and was painted en plein air. Millais, however, didn't bailiwick his xix-twelvemonth-erstwhile model, Elizabeth Siddall, to the elements; she reportedly posed for the artist in a bathtub full of h2o in his London studio.

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The Gross Dispensary

- Artist: Thomas Eakins
- Yr: 1875

Philadelphia artist Thomas Eakins spent a yr working on "The Gross Clinic," which he painted specifically for his hometown's 1876 Centennial Exhibition. The closely observed work depicts Dr. Samuel Gross and associates operating on a patient'southward leg. A stricken woman hiding her face from the open up gash has been traditionally identified as the faceless patient's female parent. Sitting behind Gross, to the right of the painting is a self-portrait of the creative person. Jurists, shocked by the gory realism, rejected the piece of work, which was somewhen housed in a reconstruction of a U.South. Regular army Mail Hospital.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

Christ in the Storm on the Bounding main of Galilee

- Artist: Rembrandt van Rijn
- Yr: 1633

Purchased by art enthusiast Isabella Stewart Gardner in 1898, Rembrandt's only painted seascape occupied a identify of prominence in the Boston museum Gardner erected in her name until March eighteen, 1990, when information technology was stolen, along with over a dozen important works valued at approximately half a billion dollars. Although the finger has oftentimes been pointed at now-deceased Boston career criminal Whitey Bulger, the thieves take never been caught, and the whereabouts of the missing artwork remains unknown.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

Jack the Ripper's Sleeping accommodation

- Artist: Walter Sickert
- Year: 1908

Walter Sickert, noted for his moody portraits and dimly lit domestic interiors, may have harbored a secret darker than his paintings. It has been argued that disconcerting works such as "Jack the Ripper'southward Bedchamber" and "The Camden Boondocks Murder" may reflect some connection between the artist and the grisly Whitechapel butcher—either as an accomplice or the murderer himself.

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Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear

- Artist: Vincent van Gogh
- Twelvemonth: 1889

Vincent van Gogh is famous for having severed his own ear; the strained relationship with fellow post-impressionist Paul Gauguin that precipitated the creative person'due south cocky-mutilation is not nearly likewise known. Van Gogh spent 1888 working in the Due south of France and was joined in October of that twelvemonth by Gauguin. Their friendship deteriorated, and van Gogh didn't react well to the news of Gauguin's impending departure. The troubled artist cut off his ear, wrapped in newspaper, and reportedly gave it to a local prostitute for safekeeping. "Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear" depicts van Gogh in his studio, with the right side of his head wrapped in cloth. In fact, information technology was a portion of van Gogh'southward left ear that was removed, with the inconsistency in the painting arising from the inverted reflection perceived by the artist while gazing in the mirror.

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Laura Estefania Lopez // Wikimedia Eatables

Guernica

- Artist: Pablo Picasso
- Year: 1937

An enormous, shifting mass of distorted, agonized figures, Pablo Picasso'southward "Guernica" was the creative person's personal response to the horrific bombing inflicted by the Germans on the tiny Basque town in 1937. Exhibited at the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne the aforementioned year, the painting was a plea for peace in an age of brutal conflict—both the Spanish Civil War and the dawn of World War 2. Picasso expressly preclude the exhibition of his masterwork in Spain until the country became a republic. While his homeland never met that demand, the painting was seen—behind bullet-proof glass—at the Prada in Madrid in 1981, vi years after the expiry of dictator Francisco Franco.

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The Scream

- Artist: Edvard Munch
- Year: 1893

Popularly known as "The Scream," Norwegian artist Edvard Munch'due south expressionist masterpiece is frequently interpreted as a primal response to the excessive pressures of modern life. Originally titled "The Shriek of Nature," the paradigm was created with an entirely unlike intent, every bit related by Munch himself, "One evening I was walking along a path, the metropolis was on one side and the fjord below. I felt tired and ill. I stopped and looked out over the fjord—the sunday was setting, and the clouds turning blood ruby. I sensed a scream passing through nature; information technology seemed to me that I heard the scream. I painted this picture, painted the clouds as actual blood. The color shrieked." The iconic painting was stolen from the Oslo National Gallery in 1994; the culprit was apprehended and the painting recovered several months subsequently. Ironically, a 1910 version of "The Scream" was taken in broad daylight from the Munch Museum in 2004. It, likewise, was somewhen recovered despite fears it had been destroyed.

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Postdif // Wikimedia Commons

2 Tahitian Women

- Artist: Paul Gauguin
- Year: 1899

A leading mail-impressionist and frenemy of Vincent van Gogh, Gauguin abandoned his wife and children for a hedonistic life in the Southward Seas. Admired for over a century for his seemingly innocent portraits of Tahitian women, Gaughin was besides a syphilitic sexual predator who molested countless immature girls in his Polynesian pleasure palace dubbed "The House of Orgasm."

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Eatables

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer

- Artist: Gustav Klimt
- Twelvemonth: 1907

I of a scattering of paintings seized by the Nazis from the family unit home of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, this glittering portrait by fin-de-siecle artist Gustav Klimt depicts the Viennese carbohydrate magnate's wife—fine art enthusiast and lodge hostess Adele Bloch-Bauer. After the war, the portrait turned upwards in the country-run Galerie Belvedere. Maria Altmann, Adele'south niece, spent years fighting for the painting'southward return, finally triumphing in 2006. The incredible story was made into a film, "Woman in Aureate," starring Helen Mirren as Altmann. Both patron and muse, Bloch-Bauer is the only sitter Klimt painted twice.

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Prof saxx // Wikimedia Commons

Lascaux Cave Paintings

- Artist: Unknown
- Year: c. 15,000–17,000 B.C.

In 1940, 18-year-one-time Marcel Ravidat opened a window to the distant by when he vicious into a pigsty while out walking with his dog in the Dordogne region of French republic. The hole led to a cave covered with approximately 6,000 Paleolithic images depicting animals, enigmatic symbols, and a lone human form. The purpose of the paintings, created with mineral pigments and charcoal, is obscure but may be linked to some sort of ceremonial rite.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

Primavera

- Artist: Sandro Botticelli
- Year: 1477–1482

Christened "Primavera" by pioneering art historian Giorgio Vasari in 1550, Boticelli's mysterious masterwork originally lacked a championship. Although its precise pregnant remains enigmatic, "Primavera" is an allegorical piece of work inspired by classical mythology, depicting the transformation of the nymph Chloris into Flora, the goddess of spring. Commissioned by a fellow member of the powerful Medici clan, information technology has been suggested that figures in the limerick were modeled on members of the family.

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Portrait of Madame X

- Artist: John Vocalizer Sargent
- Year: 1883–84

John Vocalizer Sargent'due south moody portrait of Virginie Avegno Gautreau, the American married woman of a French broker, outraged critics when information technology was outset exhibited at the Paris Salon 1884. Sargent had hoped the portrait would make his career. The painting, all the same, set up off a scandal of such magnitude that Sargent exiled himself to England. What was information technology that had then offended Parisian loftier order? While the image'southward overt sexuality was expected for a mythological heroine and tolerable for a prostitute moonlighting equally an artist's model, it was downright threatening when applied to a adult female of their own cast.

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Don Emmert // Getty Images

Untitled

- Artist: Jean-Michel Basquiat
- Twelvemonth: 1982

Jean-Michel Basquiat's meteoric rise from Brooklyn graffiti artist to critically acclaimed painter is the stuff of legend. The youthful Neo-expressionist lived hard and died at the tender age of 27 from a heroin overdose. In December 2018, ane of Basquiat'south untitled works gear up a record at Sotheby's, selling for a $110.v million. The staggering selling price spurred the owner of another Basquiat painting to have the work authenticated. An ultraviolet light test revealed that the painting included elements drawn by Basquiat in invisible ink.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

Flaming June

- Artist: Sir Frederic Leighton
- Yr: 1895

"Flaming June," of the languid dazzler in the transparent orange dress, was painted past esteemed British creative person Frederic Leighton at the close of the 19th century. The painting disappeared presently after, only to reemerge in the early 1960s when information technology was supposedly discovered in a chimney past a laborer working at a construction site. Considered highly unfashionable at the time, the painting failed to make reserve when it came to sale. It was acquired soon after by Puerto Rico's Museo de Arte de Ponce, where it remains to this twenty-four hour period.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

At the Moulin Rouge

- Artist: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
- Year: 1892–95

Born to wealth and privilege, Toulouse-Lautrec abased his aristocratic roots in favor of the working-class Montmartre district and its colorful nightlife. The artist appears to accept been afflicted with a genetic disorder affecting growth and bone development; he walked with a cane and reached an adult height of merely 4 feet, eight inches tall. Taunted for his physical appearance, he self-medicated with booze, notably absinthe. "At the Moulin Rouge" depicts the world in which Toulouse-Lautrec felt well-nigh at ease. In add-on to entertainers such as cherry-headed chanteuse Jane Avril and dancer May Milton (with the verdigris-tinted complexion), the piece also includes a cocky-portrait of the creative person in the company of his cousin, Gabriel Tapié de Céleyran.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

The Ambassadors

- Artist: Hans Holbein the Younger
- Yr: 1533

The most in-need portrait painter of his era, Hans Holbein spent a considerable corporeality of time at the court of Henry Viii. "The Ambassadors" depicts Jean de Dinteville, the French ambassador to England, and his friend, George de Selve, both in their late 20s; de Selve, the bishop of Lavaur, served every bit administrator to both the Holy Roman emperor and the pope.

The painting is scattered with emblematic components, including a lute with broken strings—perhaps symbolic of Henry Eight's break with Rome then that he could divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry his mistress, Anne Boleyn. The blurry, blackness-and-white object that bisects the bottom of the composition is, in fact, a human skull, representing mortality. Striking use of anamorphosis, it tin can just exist viewed from an astute angle, forcing observers to view the painting from a variety of perspectives.

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Ben Stansall // Getty Images

Girl With Balloon

- Creative person: Banksy
- Twelvemonth: 2006

In 2002, the stenciled image of a girl reaching toward a cerise, heart-shaped balloon appeared on a staircase leading to London'southward Waterloo Bridge. Attributed to the elusive creative person Banksy, several other examples popped up around London in subsequent years. In 2018, a 2006 version of the painting was auctioned at Sotheby's for the princely sum of $1.4 million, automatically shredding itself by ways of a device subconscious past the artist within the frame the moment the gavel hit the block. Moments after the incident, Banksy posted an Instagram video depicting telephone staff staring in stupor at the mutilated piece of work.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

Judith Slaying Holofernes

- Artist: Artemisia Gentileschi
- Year: 1610

Historically, it hasn't been piece of cake for women artists to suspension into the big fourth dimension, just Bizarre painter Artemisia Gentileschi did simply that, exercising her demons in the procedure. Sexually assaulted at 18, Gentileschi angrily confronted her attacker in a public trial which ultimately set him gratis. She channeled her ensuing rage into her piece of work, notably "Judith Slaying Holofernes," which depicts adamant Quondam Testament heroine Judith severing the head of the drunken Babylonian general.

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Paul Vicente // Getty Images

Myra

- Artist: Marcus Harvey
- Year: 1995

When Marcus Harvey'south massive painting of Uk'south most despised woman—'60s kid killer Myra Hindley—debuted at the 1997 Sensation exhibition at London'due south Majestic Academy of Arts, to say it was met with controversy would be an understatement. Four members of the Academy resigned in protest and the painting was vandalized repeatedly.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

Nocturne in Black and Gold, the Falling Rocket

- Artist: James Abbott McNeill Whistler
- Yr: 1875

What could exist so objectionable almost a painting of fireworks over a picturesque London park? Quite a lot, apparently. Whistler, a proponent of the aesthetic motion, failed to impress revered Victorian art critic John Ruskin, with his series of paintings referred to as his "nocturnes." Ruskin savaged Whistler's work—besides every bit the painting's hefty asking price of 200 guineas (a guinea was a money equal to about one-quarter ounce of gold, minted between 1663–1814 in Great United kingdom). Whistler retaliated by taking Ruskin to court, suing him for libel. Whistler emerged triumphant but the ordeal broke both men, bankrupting Whistler and causing Ruskin to resign his Oxford professorship.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

Salvator Mundi

- Creative person: Leonardo da Vinci
- Year: 1500

Believed for years to be the production of his atelier, or even a copy of a lost piece of work by the Renaissance master, "Salvator Mundi" sold at auction in November 2017 for a cool $450.3 million after scholars reached a consensus that the painting was the work of da Vinci. Thought to be leap for the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the small panel disappeared from public view immediately after auction at Christie'southward. It is believed to be in the possession of a Saudi prince (mayhap Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud), either locked abroad in a Swiss banking concern vault, or displayed on a luxury yacht somewhere on the high seas.

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The Two Fridas

- Artist: Frida Kahlo
- Year: 1939

Mexican artist Frida Kahlo has developed an almost cult-similar following in contempo years, but took a back seat to hubby and fellow-creative person Diego Rivera during her lifetime. Kahlo's work is infused with a deeply personal iconography and references a life of physical and emotional ache. "The Two Fridas," portrays the artist before and afterwards her painful separation from Rivera; on the left every bit a helpmate with an eviscerated heart, and on the right dressed in the traditional Mexican costume she favored during happier times with Rivera.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

The Ghent Altarpiece

- Artist: Hubert and Jan van Eyck
- Year: c. 1432

Fix aflame by Calvinists, hacked apart by avaricious dealers, and repeatedly stolen, "The Ghent Altarpiece" is arguably the most resilient painting in the history of art. Brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck'due south Early on Netherlandish polyptych, equanimous of 12 panels, was created for St. Bavo'south Cathedral in Ghent, Belgium. In 1934, one of the smaller panels was stolen and never recovered. Several years later, Hitler developed an interest in the painting and had it transported to Germany, where information technology was rescued from a table salt mine by the military unit composed of art historians known every bit The Monuments Men.

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Sailko // Wikimedia Commons

Juan de Pareja

- Artist: Velázquez (Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez)
- Twelvemonth: 1650

A masterpiece of the Spanish Baroque, Velázquez'southward introspective portrait of his atelier assistant, Juan de Pareja, was met with applause from contemporaries. An creative person in his own right, Pareja wasn't Velázquez's assistant by choice—he was the artist'southward slave. Shortly after the painting was finished, Pareja was freed and went on to work as a painter in Madrid.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Eatables

Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuñiga

- Creative person: Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)
- Year: 1787–88

Vicente Joaquín Osorio de Moscoso y Guzmán, count of Altamira, deputed this tender portrait of his immature son, Manuel, from court painter Francisco Goya. Dressed in a cerise silk romper with white cuffs and collar, the elaborately dressed kid poses with a menagerie of family pets, including a magpie. The image immortalized the little boy who passed away just a few years afterwards it was painted.

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Demoiselles d'Avignon

- Artist: Pablo Picasso
- Year: 1907

An icon of Cubism, Pablo Picasso'south daring grouping portrait depicting an unabashed group of Spanish prostitutes was met with a tepid response from colleagues and critics akin. A anarchism of apartment, geometric planes, Picasso drew inspiration both from African art and that of ancient Iberia.

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The Persistence of Memory

- Artist: Salvador Dali
- Yr: 1931

Surrealist Salvador Dali subverts reality with this mesmerizing image of deflated timepieces scattered over a desert landscape. The composition defies logic, evoking a dream-similar country. Dali employed the "paranoiac-disquisitional method" in his creative process, self-inducing a delusional state.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

Young Ill Bacchus

- Artist: Caravaggio
- Year: 1593

The God of Wine in Caravaggio's canvass has a distinctly dark-green tinge, suggesting that he's imbibed a bit too much of the fermented grape. A possible self-portrait, the unusual representation of the Roman deity may have been sparked by Carravagio'south hospitalization for an unknown illness.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

Dancer Making Points

- Artist: Edgar Degas
- Year: 1878–eighty

Degas' "Dancer Making Points"—valued at $ten 1000000—disappeared from reclusive copper heiress Huguette Clark's Fifth Artery home, inexplicably surfacing in New York'south David Findlay Gallery shortly afterward. The notoriously private Clark realized the painting was missing, just declined to report it to authorities. When it was revealed that Herbert Bloch of H&R Block fame had purchased information technology, a compromise was reached with Clark whereby the painting was donated to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Eatables

Portrait of the Male child Eutyches

- Artist: Unknown
- Year: c. 100–150 A.D.

"Portrait of the Male child Eutyches" is just one of hundreds of remarkably life-like paintings produced in the ancient Egyptian Fayum region. Noted for their large, expressive optics, these panels were painted with encaustics (hot wax tinted with pigments). Roman Egypt was a cultural melting pot, and the Fayum portraits reverberate the cultural crossroads in which they were created. The encaustic process used by the Romans was developed by the ancient Greeks, and the resulting portraits were placed over the faces of the mummified dead—a distinctively Egyptian tradition.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

A Dominicus on La Grande Jatte

- Artist: Georges Seurat
- Year: 1884

It took Seurat two years to finish his all-time-known piece of work, pieced together from dozens of sketches the artist made of working-class Parisians. Critics panned the 7-by-x-foot painting when it was first exhibited in 1886, dubious of the complicated theory of light and color underpinning Seurat'due south pioneering pointillism. Over the course of the next century, popular opinion buoyed the painting to cult condition, inspiring Stephen Sondheim to pen the hit Broadway musical "Sunday in the Park with George."

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The Son of Man

- Artist: René Magritte
- Year: 1946

The works of the Belgian painter René Magritte are oft head-scratchers, and "The Son of Human being"—a self-portrait of the creative person with his face obscured by a giant apple—is no exception. The apple was one of the artist's favorite motifs, but its pregnant is uncertain. The championship chosen by Magritte is possibly more illuminating, referencing Jesus Christ. Some critics take called the slice a surrealist interpretation of the transfiguration of Jesus.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

The Nude Maja

- Artist: Francisco Goya
- Year: 1797–1800

Goya painted two versions of the Maja—one naked, the other fully clothed. The painting is believed to have been commissioned by Spanish Prime Government minister Manuel de Godoy and was intended to supplement his existing drove of nudes. In 1814, the Inquisition confiscated the painting. Today, information technology hangs side by side to its companion in Madrid'south Museo del Prado.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

Tennis at Newport

- Artist: George Bellows
- Year: 1919

A departure from his gritty paintings of pugilists, George Bellows' "Tennis at Newport" depicts a tony tournament in Newport, Rhode Island. Bathed in an otherworldly lite, the painting focuses on the spectral images of the spectators, as opposed to the players. A fellow member of the early 20th-century Ashcan School, American artist Bellows was instrumental in the organization of the profoundly influential 1913 Arsenal testify in New York.

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Helpmate of the Wind

- Creative person: Oskar Kokoschka
- Year: 1914

A love letter to his mistress, Oskar Kokoschka'south almost famous work depicts the artist entwined with his muse, Alma Mahler—the widow of composer Gustav Mahler. The historic expressionist was so down-hearted when Mahler concluded their passionate affair, he commissioned a life-size doll in her image.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

Liberty Leading the People

- Creative person: Eugène Delacroix
- Year: 1830

While Delacroix's "Liberty Leading the People" may be familiar to mod viewers from the encompass of Coldplay's 2008 release,"Viva la Vida," the exuberant canvas was originally intended to celebrate the July Revolution of 1830. Dominating the composition is the central figure of a woman belongings the tricolor—considered to be the earliest known depiction of Marianne, the female person personification of the Commonwealth of France.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

The Sleepers

- Artist: Gustave Courbet
- Year: 1866

Painted for the Turkish diplomat Halil Şerif Pasha, Courbet's frankly erotic canvas sidestepped the Paris Salon, where it most certainly would have been met with condemnation. Pasha was an avid collector of Western paintings—notably those showcasing the female person course—purchasing works past realists Delacroix and Ingres in addition to Courbet.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

Washington Crossing the Delaware

- Artist: Emanuel Leutze
- Year: 1851

Not but was the iconic "Washington Crossing the Delaware" painted virtually 75 years after the Revolutionary War, only information technology was also painted past High german artist Emanuel Leutze in Düsseldorf. Leutze had spent fourth dimension in the U.S. and painted the scene with the promise that it would inspire European revolutionaries.

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Allie_Cauflield // Flickr

I and the Hamlet

- Artist: Marc Chagall
- Year: 1911

An ethereal, dream-similar romanticism infuses Russian expat Marc Chagall'south vision of life on the shtetl in "I and the Village." Heavy on symbolism, the painting demonstrates a Cubist influence, to which the immature Chagall was exposed while living in Paris.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

The Blue Boy

- Artist: Thomas Gainsborough
- Year: 1770

Gainsborough's "Blue Boy" was an firsthand hit when it get-go debuted at London'due south Royal Academy of Arts and continues to be reproduced for popular consumption. Believed to be a portrait of Jonathan Buttall, whose father was a friend of Gainsborough, Buttall owned the painting until bankruptcy forced him to sell it.

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Campbell's Soup Cans

- Artist: Andy Warhol
- Year: 1962

The panels composing Andy Warhol's "32 Campbell's Soup Cans" were almost separated for all eternity when they were first exhibited at Los Angeles' Ferus Gallery. The paintings were an immediate hitting, and possessor Irving Blum sold v of them before coming to the shrewd realization that the canvases would exist of fifty-fifty greater value as a complete prepare. Blum tracked down the paintings that had sold (including i belonging to role player Dennis Hopper), and reunited them.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

Mona Lisa

- Creative person: Leonardo da Vinci
- Year: 1503

Leonardo da Vinci'due south woman of mystery has intrigued viewers for centuries. Traditionally identified as Italian noblewoman Lisa Del Giocondo, countless hypotheses have been put forth as to the sitter's identity as well as explanations for her seemingly enigmatic smile. Extensive multi-spectral imaging conducted past Lumiere Technology in 2006, which uncovered years of varnish, didn't shed any light as to the reasons behind the Mona Lisa's facial expression, but it did reveal that her smiling was originally broader than it appears today.

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