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50 works of art to see before you die
an interesting article for The Guardian, Jonathan Jones takes a look at 50 works of art you really ought to see. I’m ashamed to say I’ve seen only a few of them. Making the list are, in no particular order:
In - Piero della Francesca The Baptism of Christ (1450s), National Gallery, London
- Antony Gormley The Angel of the North (1998), Gateshead
- Masjid-i Shah (now Masjid-i Imam) Mosque (largely 1612-1630) Isfahan, Iran
- JMW Turner Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway (exhibited 1844), National Gallery, London
- Claude Monet Nymphéas (1914-1926), Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris
- Robert Smithson Spiral Jetty (1970), Great Salt Lake, Utah
- Tikal (AD300-AD869), Late Classic Maya site, Guatemala
- Jackson Pollock One: Number 31, 1950, Museum of Modern Art, New York
- John Constable The Hay Wain (1821), National Gallery, London
- The Alhambra (mostly 14th century), Granada
- Mark Rothko The Rothko Chapel (paintings 1965-66; chapel opened 1971), Houston, Texas
- Matthias Grünewald The Isenheim Altarpiece (1509-1515), Musée Unterlinden, Colmar
- Masaccio The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise (c. 1427), Brancacci Chapel, Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence
- Edvard Munch The Scream (1893), National Gallery, Oslo
- Giotto Fresco cycle in the Scrovegni Chapel (1305-1306), Padua
- Vincent van Gogh The Starry Night (1889), Museum of Modern Art, New York
- Terracotta Army of the First Qin Emperor (c. 210BC), Shaanxi province, China
- Sandro Botticelli Primavera (1481-1482), Uffizi Gallery, Florence
- Stonehenge (2950BC-1600BC), Salisbury Plain, UK
- Limbourg brothers Les Très Riches Heurs du Duc de Berry (1413-1416), Musée Condé, Chantilly
- The Book of Kells (c. AD800), Trinity College Library, Dublin
- Ishtar Gate (c. 575BC), Pergamon Museum, Berlin
- Pieter Pauwel Rubens Descent from the Cross (1611-1614), Antwerp Cathedral
- Hieronymous Bosch The Garden of Earthly Delights (1505-1510), Prado, Madrid
- Jan van Eyck The Madonna of Chancellor Rolin (c. 1435), Musée du Louvre, Paris
- Jan Vermeer View of Delft (c. 1660-1661), Mauritshuis, the Hague
- Caravaggio The Burial of St Lucy (1608), Museo di Palazzo Bellomo, Syracuse, Sicily
- Rembrandt Aristotle with a Bust of Homer (1654), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
- Francisco Goya The Third of May 1808 (1814), Prado, Madrid
- Edouard Manet The Dead Torero (1864), National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
- Paul Cézanne Mont Sainte-Victoire from Les Lauves (1904-1906), Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow
- Michelangelo Sistine Chapel ceiling and altar wall frescoes (1508-1541), Rome
- Leonardo da Vinci The Adoration of the Magi (c. 1481), Uffizi Gallery, Florence
- Pablo Picasso, Guernica (1937), Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid
- Titian Danaë (1544-1546), Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples
- Raphael The School of Athens (1510-1511), Stanza della Signatura, Vatican Palace, Rome
- Parthenon Sculptures (Elgin Marbles) (c. 444BC), British Museum, London
- Henri Matisse The Dance (1910), Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg
- Théodore Géricault The Raft of the Medusa (1819), Louvre, Paris
- Katsushika Hokusai Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (1829-1833), series of woodblock prints, copies in major museums worldwide
- Pieter Bruegel the Elder Hunters in the Snow (1565), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
- Ice Age paintings (about 30,000 years old) in the Chauvet Cave, Ardèche
- Richard Serra Torqued Ellipses (1996), includes works on permanent view at the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao
- Jasper Johns Flag (1954-1955), Museum of Modern Art, New York
- Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi The Annunciation (1335), Uffizi Gallery, Florence
- Jean-Antoine Watteau Gilles (1718-1719), Louvre, Paris
- Hans Holbein, The Dead Christ (1521-1522), Kunstmuseum, Basel
- Diego Velázquez Las Meninas (1656), Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
- Funerary Mask of Tutankhamun (1333BC-1323BC), Egyptian Museum, Cairo
- San Rock Art, South African National Museum, Cape Town, and at open air sites
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Have seen about 14 of these, some artworks definitely have more impact in real life! I’d have to add a trip to the Miro Foundation in Barcelona, it’s such a brilliant gallery and the paintings really have to be seen first hand.