Art · Curated list
Mona Lisa, The Starry Night, Girl with a Pearl Earring and 27 more, ranked by how much of the world has written about each one.
Most written-about first. Each description summarises the painting's Wikipedia article, which its name links to.
1
Painting by Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci's portrait of a woman seen to the waist, regarded as an archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance. One description calls it "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, [and] the most parodied work of art in the world".
Wikidata · Photo: Leonardo da Vinci, Public domain
2
1889 painting by Vincent van Gogh
An oil painting on canvas by Vincent van Gogh, the Dutch Post-Impressionist. Painted in June 1889, it shows the view just before sunrise from the east-facing window of his room in the asylum at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, with a village he imagined added in.
Wikidata · Photo: Vincent van Gogh, Public domain
3
1665 painting by Johannes Vermeer
An oil painting by Johannes Vermeer, the Dutch Golden Age painter, dated c. 1665. Known by several names over the centuries, it took its present title late in the 20th century.
Wikidata · Photo: Johannes Vermeer, Public domain
4
1937 anti-war painting by Pablo Picasso
A large oil painting of 1937 by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, one of his most famous works. Many art critics consider it the most powerful and moving painting against war ever made.
Wikidata · Photo: Jules Verne Times Two, CC BY-SA 4.0
5
1830 painting by Eugène Delacroix
A Romantic-era painting by the French artist Eugène Delacroix, marking the July Revolution of 1830, which overthrew King Charles X. A bare-breasted "woman of the people" in a Phrygian cap, embodying both the idea of Liberty and its goddess, leads a crowd of all kinds of people forward, climbing over the fallen and a barricade, a young boy with a pistol in each hand at her side; in one hand she raises the tricolour flag of the French Revolution, which became France's national flag again after these events, and in the other she wields a musket with a bayonet.
Wikidata · Photo: Eugène Delacroix, Public domain
6
1642 painting by Rembrandt
A painting of 1642 by Rembrandt van Rijn, usually called The Night Watch; its full title is “Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq”, and it is also known as “The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch”. It belongs to the Amsterdam Museum but hangs prominently in the Rijksmuseum, as the best-known painting there.
7
1656 painting by Diego Velázquez
An oil painting of 1656 in Madrid's Museo del Prado by Diego Velázquez, the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age and of the court of Philip IV, King of Spain and Portugal. Its complex, puzzling composition, which raises questions of illusion and reality and leaves unclear how the viewer relates to the figures shown, has made it one of the most analysed works of Western painting.
Wikidata · Photo: Diego Velázquez, Public domain
8
Painting by Sandro Botticelli
A painting by the Italian artist Sandro Botticelli, probably made in the mid-1480s. It shows the goddess Venus coming ashore after her birth, having risen from the sea already grown.
Wikidata · Photo: Sandro Botticelli, Public domain
9
Painting by Vincent van Gogh
An oil painting by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh, made from April to May of 1885 at Nuenen, in the Netherlands.
Wikidata · Photo: Vincent van Gogh, Public domain
10
1872 painting by Claude Monet
A painting of 1872 by Claude Monet, first shown in Paris in April, 1874, at what came to be called the "Exhibition of the Impressionists". It is credited with giving the Impressionist movement its name.
Wikidata · Photo: Claude Monet, Public domain
11
1866 painting by Gustave Courbet
An oil painting on canvas by the French painter Gustave Courbet, from 1866: a close-up of the abdomen and vulva of a woman, naked, reclining on a bed, her legs apart.
Wikidata · Photo: Gustave Courbet, Public domain
12
1787 painting by Jacques-Louis David
An oil on canvas by the French painter Jacques-Louis David, from 1787. It belongs to the neoclassical style, popular in the 1780s, that took its subjects from the Classical age, here the execution of Socrates as Plato tells it in the Phaedo.
Wikidata · Photo: Jacques-Louis David, CC0
13
Painting by Gustav Klimt
A painting in oil on canvas, with gold leaf, silver and platinum added, by the Austrian Symbolist Gustav Klimt. He painted it at some point in 1907 and 1908, at the peak of what scholars call his "Golden Period".
Wikidata · Photo: Gustav Klimt, Public domain
14
Painting by Leonardo da Vinci, 1489–1491
A portrait by Leonardo da Vinci, the Italian Renaissance artist, dated c. 1489–1491 and painted in oils on a walnut panel.
Wikidata · Photo: Leonardo da Vinci, Public domain
15
Painting attributed to Leonardo da Vinci
A painting credited wholly or partly to Leonardo da Vinci, the Italian High Renaissance artist, dated c. 1499–1510. Long taken for a copy of a lost original hidden under overpainting, it was rediscovered and restored, and shown in 2011–2012 at London's National Gallery in a Leonardo exhibition.
Wikidata · Photo: Leonardo da Vinci, Public domain
16
Triptych painting by Hieronymus Bosch
The modern title of a five-panel triptych by Hieronymus Bosch, the Early Netherlandish master, painted between 1490 and 1510, when he was 40 to 60 years old. Because of Bosch's religious beliefs, it is usually read as a warning against the dangers of temptation.
Wikidata · Photo: Hieronymus Bosch, Public domain
17
Oil painting by Caspar David Friedrich
A painting of 1818 by Caspar David Friedrich, the German Romantic artist. A man stands with his back to us on a rocky crag, looking out over a landscape under a thick sea of fog, through which further ridges, trees and mountains rise, stretching away without end.
Wikidata · Photo: Caspar David Friedrich, Public domain
1931 painting by Salvador Dalí
A painting of 1931 by Salvador Dalí, among the most recognisable works of Surrealism. First shown at the Julien Levy Gallery in 1932 and sold for $250, it was given by an anonymous donor two years later, in 1934, to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, where it has stayed ever since.
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19
Painting by Théodore Géricault
A work in oils, painted in 1818–1819, by Théodore Géricault (1791–1824), French lithographer and Romantic painter; its original title was Scène de Naufrage. He completed it aged 27, and it is now an icon of Romanticism in France.
Wikidata · Photo: Théodore Géricault, Public domain
20
Painting by Ilya Repin
A painting by Ilya Repin, the Russian realist artist, who was born in Ukraine. Other titles for it are “Cossacks of Saporog Are Drafting a Manifesto” and “Cossacks are Writing a Letter to the Turkish Sultan”.
Wikidata · Photo: Ilya Repin, Public domain
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21
1930 painting by Grant Wood
An oil painting on beaverboard from 1930 by Grant Wood, the American Regionalist, showing a Midwestern farmer and his daughter in front of their house in the Carpenter Gothic style. It is one of the best-known American paintings of the 20th century and is often referred to in popular culture.
Wikidata · Photo: Grant Wood, Public domain
22
Painting by Édouard Manet
A large oil painting on canvas, first titled Le Bain, that Édouard Manet made in 1862 and 1863.
Wikidata · Photo: Édouard Manet, Public domain
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23
Painting by Francisco de Goya
Also called The Nude Maja, an oil painting on canvas by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya, made around 1797–1800 and in Madrid's Museo del Prado since 1901. It shows a woman lying naked on pillows, and Manuel Godoy probably commissioned it for a separate room of his private collection set aside for nudes.
Wikidata · Photo: Francisco Goya, Public domain
24
1814 painting by Francisco de Goya
A painting finished in 1814 by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya, known in Spanish by several titles, among them “El tres de mayo de 1808 en Madrid” and “Los fusilamientos del tres de mayo”. With it Goya meant to honour Spain's resistance to Napoleon's armies when they occupied Madrid in 1808, at the outbreak of the Peninsular War.
Wikidata · Photo: Francisco Goya, Public domain
25
1632 painting by Rembrandt
An oil painting on canvas of 1632 by Rembrandt, in the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, Netherlands. It was first made for the Surgeons Guild to hang in their meeting room.
26
Painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir
A painting of 1876 by the French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
Wikidata · Photo: Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Public domain
27
1658–1661 painting by Johannes Vermeer
Sometimes called The Kitchen Maid, an oil painting on canvas by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer of a "milkmaid" who is really a kitchen maid in a household. It hangs in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, which calls it "unquestionably one of the museum's finest attractions".
Wikidata · Photo: Johannes Vermeer, Public domain
28
1434 painting by Jan van Eyck
An oil painting on an oak panel by Jan van Eyck, the Early Netherlandish painter, dated 1434 and now in the National Gallery, London. A double portrait of two full figures, it is thought to show the Italian merchant Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini and his wife, presumably at home in the Flemish city of Bruges.
Wikidata · Photo: Jan van Eyck, Public domain
29
Painting by Vincent van Gogh
An oil painting by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh from 1889: a landscape, closely cropped, one of the several hundred paintings he made at the Saint Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, in the year before he died in 1890.
Wikidata · Photo: Vincent van Gogh, Public domain
30
1863 painting by Édouard Manet
An oil painting of 1863 by Édouard Manet, showing a naked white woman ("Olympia") lying on a bed, waited on by a black maid. The French state bought it in 1890, after a public subscription organised by Claude Monet.
Wikidata · Photo: Édouard Manet, Public domain
Every Wikidata item that is a painting, and that has its own English Wikipedia article, ranked by the number of Wikimedia sites with a page about it — Wikipedia's language editions, mostly, and sister projects such as Wikiquote. That counts how many communities independently thought it worth describing, and nobody can buy a place on it. The top 30 are shown.
Fetched from Wikidata on 2026-09-25. Each description is this site's summary of the entry's Wikipedia article, which its name links to: the wording is ours, the facts are Wikipedia's, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. To correct an entry, correct it there; the next refresh carries the change.
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