1.Mona Lisa
While some call that Leonardo da Vinci ’s most famous house painting is a self - portraiture of the creative person himself in drag , research has concluded it is likely a portrayal of a woman bring up Lisa Gherardini , a phallus of a salient Florentine family and married woman of a wealthy silk merchandiser . Leonardo ’s father allegedly cognize Gherardini ’s Father-God very well , and the painting was possibly commissioned by him .
2.The Last Supper
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Da Vinci ’s other most famous work — which can be look in the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan , Italy — earlier included Jesus ’ feet . But in 1652 , while installing a doorway in the refectory where the painting is on horizon , detergent builder cut into the bottom - center of the mural , lopping off Jesus ’ animal foot .
3. The Starry Night
The pocket-sized town picture in Vincent van Gogh’sThe Starry Nightis Saint - Rémy - de - Provence in the south of France . Van Gogh painted the employment while he was a patient at the Saint - Paul - Diamond State - Mausole , a psychiatric infirmary in Saint - Rémy . shortly , the hospital has awingnamed after the painter .
4.Michelangelo’s David
The marble slab that was eventually release into the sculpture of David by Michelangelo in 1504 was cut 43 years before for an artist named Agostino di Duccio , who planned to turn it into a statue ofHercules . Di Duccio abandoned his carving , which was originally to be installed in a Florentine duomo , and the marble was unused for 10 year until another sculptor , name Antonio Rossellino , decided to work with it . Rossellino also abandon his work because he recover marble too unmanageable to sculpt , and finally Michelangelo began work on his carving in 1501 .
5.The Creation of Adam
Michelangelo painted the fresco cap of the Sistine Chapel — including the most renowned panel called “ The Creation of Adam , ” which depict God giving life to the first homo — entirely standing up . The creative person make up a series of scaffold especially designed to attach to the chapel service wall with brackets so he and his assistants could be close enough to the ceiling to reach above their heads to influence and paint .
6. The Scream
There are technicallyfiveseparate version of Expressionist creative person Edvard Munch ’s most famous work , The Scream . The first two , from 1893 and created with tempera and wax crayon on cardboard , are located in the National Gallery in Oslo and the Munch Museum , respectively . A privately owned third version created in 1895 with pastels recentlysoldfor near $ 120 million at auction . Yet another edition from 1895 is a bootleg and bloodless lithograph machine . A final version , done in 1910 by Munch due to the popularity of the previous incarnations , is also take in the Munch Museum , and it made headlines in recent years for being stolen in 2004 and recovered in 2006 .
7.Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
Picasso ’s nonobjective depiction of five Barcelona prostitute was deemed immoral when it debut at the artist ’s studio apartment in 1907 . Picasso create over 100 preliminary resume and studies before setting his imaginativeness down on canvass , and in previous incarnations the figure at the far left was aman .
8.The Thinker
Though there are now dozens of casts of Auguste Rodin ’s famous sculptureThe Thinkeraround the creation , it had a much small rootage . Rodin originally create a 70 cm variation in 1880 as the central factor to a vainglorious sculptured work call “ The Gates of Hell . ” Inspired by Dante’sInferno , the piece — first calledThe Poet — was conceived as a delegacy of Dante himself . The re - dub carving was exhibited on its own in 1888 , then was enlarged to the depiction we know it today in 1904 .
9.Girl with a Pearl Earring
Much like theMona Lisa , the subject of Johannes Vermeer’sGirl with a Pearl Earringhas been highly repugn — but for the most probable nominee , Vermeer did n’t have to look far . The model for his painting is think to be his girl Maria .
10.American Gothic
Another famous picture with interesting models is Grant Wood’sAmerican Gothic , which can be seen on view in the assembling of the Art Institute of Chicago . To depict — for better or worse — the nonesuch of rural America , Wood wanted to expend his mother , Hattie , as a theoretical account for his painting . Wood determined that suffer for so long would be far too exhausting for his mother , so he had his sis wear his mother ’s proscenium and pin while personate . For the manlike subject in the picture , Wood used his 62 - year - old dentist .
11.Nighthawks
Another house painting in the accumulation of the Art Institute of Chicago is Edward Hopper’sNighthawks . Hopper allegedly based the painting on a diner that was site in New York City ’s Greenwich Village in an region where Greenwich Street converge 11th Street and 7th Avenue call Mulry Square . But he really based the house painting on an all - nighttime coffee stand . “ I simplify the tantrum a great tidy sum and made the restaurant bad , ” he said . “ Unconsciously , probably , I was paint the loneliness of a large city . ”
12.The Persistence of Memory
WikiArt
Though the notoriously spunky creative person Salvador Dali seek to never explain his own work , he has said that the thought for his iconic melting Erodium cicutarium do from chunks of Camembert Malva sylvestris he observed melting in the sunshine — although he may have been joking .
13.Autumn Rhythm (Number 30)
metmuseum.org
Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock is known for his many drip paintings , all of which he created by placing the canvases horizontally on the floor of his backyard studio and carefully dripping layers of paint onto them . ForAutumn Rhythm ( Number 30 ) , Pollock create the study using non - traditional item like sticks , trowels , and tongue .
14.Broadway Boogie Woogie
Dutch artist Piet Mondrian moved to New York City in 1940 , and would base his famous workBroadway Boogie Woogieon the iconic storage-battery grid layout of the city ’s streets .
15.Campbell’s Soup Cans
Rebecca O’Connell
Andy Warhol ’s 1962 Pop Art line drawing of a Campbell ’s Soup can in reality come in a set of 32 silkscreened canvases , each representing the 32 separate soup sort that the company sold at the time . Warhol never contribute instruction on how to display them , so the Museum of Modern Art stage them chronologically in the fiat in which the soups were introduced by the Campbell ’s .
