Emma Prevignano lists 20 paintings you absolutely have to see at least once in your life…
1.
Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus (Uffizi, Florence). You’ll suddenly forget of being surrounded by people taking selfies.
2.
Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa (Louvre, Paris). Smaller than you’d think, the most mysterious portrait ever painted.
3.
Tiziano, Venus of Urbino (Uffizi, Florence). There is something hypnotic in this painting.
4.
Caravaggio, Death of the Virgin (Louvre, Paris). ‘Scandalous’ painting that depicts Virgin Mary as an ordinary woman.
5.
Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring (Mauritshuis, The Hague). The ‘Mona Lisa’ of the North.
6.
Caspar David Friedrich, Evening (Hannover, Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum). Two tiny human beings surrounded by the darkening wood.
7.
Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People (Louvre, Paris). A hymn to freedom and to rebellion.
8.
Francesco Hayez, The Kiss (Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan). Beautiful and the famous.
9.
Joseph Mallord William Turner, Shade and Darkness – the Evening of the Deluge (Tate Gallery, London). ‘The painter of the light’, the forerunner of abstractism.
10.
John Everett Millais, Ophelia (Tate Britain, London). Perfect reminder of how precious and yet ephimeral life is.
11.
Édouard Manet, The Luncheon on the Grass (Musée d’Orsay, Paris). One of the most controversial paintings of art history.
12.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Dance at Le moulin de la Galette (Musée d’Orsay, Paris). ‘I like a paiting which makes me want to stroll in it.’ – Pierre-Auguste Renoir
13.
Vincent van Gogh, Wheatfield with Crows (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam). Possibly van Gogh’s last painting, something of a premonition.
14.
Evdard Munch, The Scream (National Gallery, Oslo). ‘I sensed a screaming passing through nature.’ – Edvard Munch
15.
Marc Chagall, The Birthday (Museum of Modern Art, New York). The Birthday is the epitomy of love.
16.
Amedeo Modigliani, Dedie Hayden (Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris). A few simple lines to draw the deepest melancholy.
17.
Giorgio de Chirico, The Disquieting Muses (Gianni Mattioli Collection, Milan). There’s something deeply troubling in that eternal stillness.
18.
Joan Miró, Harlequin’s Carnival (Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo). Freedom and jazz: 1920s Paris.
19.
René Magritte, The Human Condition (National Gallery of Art, Washington DC). The borders between real and unreal have never been more blurred.
20.
Pablo Picasso, Guernica (Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid). Because the list would not be complete without it.
