At the center, looking directly at the viewer is Velázquez himself painting on a large canvas. The figures shown are members of the Spanish court – Infanta Margaret Theresa, as well as her maids of honor, chaperone, bodyguard, two dwarfs, and a dog.

Sánchez Cantón, Las Meninas shows the main chamber of the Royal Alcazar of Madrid during Spanish King Philip IV’s reign. Though its meaning is widely disputed, according to Spanish art historian F.J. Thus, Las Meninas is one of the most analyzed pieces in Western painting. It’s most famous for its complexities, as this oil on canvas brings to question reality versus illusion, as well as the relationship between the viewer and the subjects shown. Spanish painter and leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age, Diego Velázquez, painted his iconic work, Las Meninas, in 1656. Year: 1642 | Medium: Oil on canvas | Location: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Today, the painting hangs in the 20th-century art museum, the Museo Reina Sofía, in Madrid, Spain. Standing 11’5” tall (3.49 meters) and 25’6” wide (7.76 meters), the huge painting prominently shows a gored horse, a screaming woman, flames, a bull, and dismemberment. Guernica ’s shocking portrayal of the atrocities of war made it become what art critics call one of the most influential anti-war paintings in history, which has brought necessary attention to the Spanish Civil War.

The bombing was requested by Spanish Nationalists of the time. Picasso painted it at his home in Paris following Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy’s bombing of Guernica, a Basque Country town in Spain. This black and white oil on canvas work depicts suffering humans and animals in the midst of chaotic violence. Year: 1889 | Medium: Oil on canvas | Location: Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York Cityįamed Spanish artist Pablo Picasso painted one of his best-known works, Guernica, in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. Perhaps the most valuable oil painting in the world, it holds a record for the highest known insurance valuation in history: $100 million in 1962, which equates to $660 million in 2019. Scholars believe the portrait was painted between 15, but some believe da Vinci was still working on the masterpiece in 1517.Īs the painting was acquired by King Francis I of France, it’s now the property of France and has hung in the Louvre since 1797. Painted in oil on a white Lombardy poplar panel, the Mona Lisa is renowned for the perplexing expression of the subject (said to be Lisa Gherardini, an Italian noblewoman), the atmospheric illusionism, and its extraordinarily unique composition, among other characteristics. After all, it’s been described as, “the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world.” 1503-06 | Medium: Oil on poplar panel | Location: Louvre Museum, ParisĪ top hit at the Louvre Museum in Paris (of the 6,000 paintings there, 90% of visitors head straight to the Mona Lisa ), Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance is perhaps the most famous oil painting portrait. So if you happen to fancy a virtual or an eventual in-person visit, we’ve rounded up 16 of the most popular oil paintings, many of which are hanging in top museums around the world. However, valuable oil paintings continue to be sought after at auction today, and some of the most famous examples of oil paintings on canvas are still gawked at by museum-goers. As widely used as the technique of oil painting became, by the height of the Renaissance, many famous artists across Europe replaced this technique with tempera painting. Oils were sometimes also boiled with a resin resulting in a glossy varnish. Oil painting involved quite a process, and traditional oils (including linseed, poppy seed, walnut, and safflower oil) took about 1-3 weeks to dry. It was the Dutch who first adopted the process of oil painting in Europe, with examples seen in Early Netherlandish painting. Many of the most famous oil paintings known to the Western world today were created by European artists, including Old Masters, in the centuries to follow their Buddhist predecessors. Buddhist artists in Afghanistan painted the earliest known examples of oil paintings, and in Europe, the technique was used by artists from as early as the 12th century. The technique of oil painting, defined by the process of painting with pigments with drying oil as the binder, dates back to the 7th century AD and thus spans a wide range of known art movements.

Oil paint canvas