It has come to my attention that today is World Art Day – an occasion that seems to be little marked here: no going to school dressed as your favourite painting, or at least clutching a reproduction thereof (perhaps just as well – it would probably be wall-to-wall Van Goghs, with the odd Monet). Anyway, I thought I'd mark the day by naming what I believe to be the greatest paintings of, as they say, 'all time' – limiting the list to those I've actually seen with my own eyes. The list I came up with shows, if nothing else, that my (visual) aesthetic sense is rooted firmly in one quite narrow period of time (though there's one outlier, from the 15th century) – or does it show that that was when painting reached its peak?
So, in no particular order...
Any and all of Titian's four 'Poesie'
Rembrandt's Night Watch
Vermeer's View of Delft
Tintoretto's Crucifixion
Van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece
Velazquez's Las Meninas
Titian's The Flaying of Marsyas
Bellini's San Zaccaria Altarpiece
Giorgione's Tempest
Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson
Any thoughts?
Wednesday, 15 April 2026
Art
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How about youtube art, then?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6W2ZMpsxhg&themeRefresh=1&feature=youtu.be
Blimey!
DeleteGreat choices but I think you need something mannerist like Lotto’s Recanati Annunciation or a Pontormo or del Sarto or del Piombo
ReplyDeleteAgreed, Guy, but I don't think there's a single stand-out painting that could quite make it into this Top Ten. The next ten, yes...
DeleteAnd I haven't seen the Lotto in the original. Alas.
DeletePrevious comment was me btw
ReplyDeleteSomebody could have had a good deal of fun dressing up as a Seurat.
ReplyDeleteA few that occur to me:
Bellini's St. Francis in the Desert
Leonardo's Portrait of a Musician
Caravaggio's The Calling of St. Matthew
Filippo Lippi's Madonna and Child (National Gallery of Art, Washington)
We were in New York at the end of last week, and visited the big Raphael exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was somewhat overwhelming, with perhaps ten drawings to every painting.
All good candidates, Guy, but I haven't seen them all in the original – and I really don't warm to Leonardo, much though I admire him. Odd that nobody's suggested the Mona Lisa, btw – is it past its peak?
DeleteA late sister-in-law said that Leonardo's Ginevra da Benci, at the National Gallery, looked as if she had just tasted something foul.
DeleteThe problem with the Mona Lisa is that one can hardly see it. Crowds of visitors do a forced march past walls any hundred square meters of which would be the making of a small city's museum. Then they line up to be able to get a brief glimpse of the Mona Lisa from five or ten meters. It is hard to warm to a painting seen under such conditions.
Absolutely, George – and that's just what Ginevra looks like. In our own National Gallery, I've often lingered in front of the Madonna of the Rocks, which at least you can see close up, but I always find something chilling about it, great painting though it certainly is.
DeleteThe Flaying of Marsyas is fathomless.
ReplyDeleteCorrect, as Roger would say.
DeleteI much prefer the Dutchmen to the rather overwrought Mediterranean painters but I did make a trip to see this El Greco about fifty years ago and found it beguiling.
ReplyDeletehttps://fineartamerica.com/featured/monkey-a-youth-and-a-man-1580-el-greco.html
Wow – that's quite a disturbing painting. So is most of El Greco, I find.
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