World's Top 10 Most Famous Masterpieces

Art provides people with a means to express themselves. It can be used to spread new ideas,  expand your imagination, fill you with emotion or send you a message. Art promotes critical  thinking, it teaches us skills like collaboration and independence. It has been part of human  existence since the dawn of time, as evident by cave paintings. Once in a while, a true master comes along, enriching humanity with their art, like these 10  great masters and their masterpieces: 1. Artist: Salvador Dalí (1904 – 1989)  Most known painting: The Persistence of Memory    Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí I Domènech, 1st Marqués de Dalí de Pubol was a  prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres, Spain. Dalí was a skilled  draftsman, best known for the striking and bizarre images in his surrealist work. His  painterly skills are often attributed to the influence of Renaissance masters. His best- known work, The Persistence of Memory, was completed in August 1931. It epitomizes  Dalí's theory of "softness" and "hardness", which was central to his thinking at the time.  As Dawn Ades wrote, "The soft watches are an unconscious symbol of the relativity of  space and time, a Surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic  order". It is currently located in the New York Museum of Modern Art. 2. Artist: Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973)  Most known painting: Guernica       Pablo Ruiz y Picasso, was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage  designer, poet and playwright who spent most of his adult life in France. As one of the  greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding  the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage  and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. The painting  Guernica was created in response to the bombing of Guernica, a Basque Country village  in northern Spain, by German and Italian warplanes at the behest of the Spanish  Nationalist forces on 26 April 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. Guernica shows  the tragedies of war and the suffering it inflicts upon individuals, particularly innocent  civilians. It is on display in the Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain. 3. Artist: Vincent Van Gogh (1853 – 1890)  Most known painting: The Starry Nigh    Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Post-Impressionist painter of Dutch origin whose work —notable for its rough beauty, emotional honesty, and bold color—had a far-reaching  influence on 20th-century art. The Starry Night is an oil on canvas, painted in June, 1889,  it depicts the view (with the notable addition of an idealized village) from the east-facing  window of his asylum room at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, just before sunrise. It has been  in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City since 1941. 4. Artist: Rembrandt (1606 – 1669) Most known painting: The Jewish Bride      Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was a Dutch painter and etcher. He is generally con sidered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art and the most important  in Dutch history. The Jewish Bride was painted around 1667. It gained its current name  in the early 19th century, when an Amsterdam art collector identified the subject as that  of a Jewish father bestowing a necklace upon his daughter on her wedding day. It is  displayed in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. 5. Artist: Michelangelo (1475 – 1564)  Most known painting: The Creation of Adam    Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and  engineer of the High Renaissance who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development  of Western art. The Creation of Adam is part of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, painted circa  1511–1512. It illustrates the Biblical creation narrative from the Book of Genesis in which  God breathes life into Adam, the first man. It is the most well-known of the Sistine Chapel  fresco panels, and its fame as a piece of art is rivaled only by the Mona Lisa. 6. Artist: Leonardo Da Vinci (1452 – 1519)  Most known painting: Mona Lisa  Leonardo di ser Piero DA Vinci was an Italian polymath, painter, sculptor, architect, musician , mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer . He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most  diversely talented person ever to have lived. His genius, perhaps more than that of any other  figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. The Mona Lisa is a half-length portrait  of a woman by Leonardo DA Vinci, which has been acclaimed as "the best known, the most  visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the  world". The painting, thought to be a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del  Giocondo, is believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506. It is on permanent  display at The Louvre museum in Paris since 1797. 7. Artist: Raphael (1483 – 1520)  Most known painting: Wedding of the Virgin      Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance.  His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achie vement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. The Marriage of the Virgin, also known  as Lo Sposalizio, was completed in 1504 for a Franciscan church in Città di Castello, the  painting depicts a marriage ceremony between Mary and Joseph. It is currently located in  Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan. 8. Artist: Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) Most known painting: Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette   Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development  of the Impressionist style. Bal du moulin de la Galette was painted in 1876 depicts a typical  Sunday afternoon at Moulin de la Galette in the district of Montmartre in Paris. It is housed  at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris and is one of Impressionism's most celebrated masterpieces. 9. Artist: Jan Vermeer (1632 – 1675)  Most known painting: Girl With Pearl Earrings    Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer was a Dutch painter who specialized in domestic interior  scenes of middle-class life. The painting Girl with a Pearl Earring is one of Dutch painter  Johannes Vermeer's masterworks and, as the name implies, uses a pearl earring for a foca l point. The image is a tronie, the Dutch 17th-century description of a ‘head’ that was not  meant to be a portrait. It has been in the collection of the Mauritshuis gallery in The Hague  since 1902. 10. Artist: Claude Monet (1840 – 1926)  Most known painting: Le Bassin Aux Nymphéas   Oscar-Claude Monet was a founder of French Impressionist painting, and the most consistent  and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions  before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. The term "Impression ism" is derived from the title of his painting Impression, soleil levant (Impression, Sunrise . The painting depict Monet's flower garden at Giverny and is the main focus of Monet's  artistic production during the last thirty years of his life. Many of the works were painted  while Monet suffered from cataracts. Since 2008, the painting has been in the possession  of a private collector.

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