Are you the kinds to crave the absolute and the supreme in art and are prepared to go a long way in search of it? Look no further. Here is a sneak preview of a roll of the 50 works of art that any self-respecting aesthete really must see before they meet their suitably picturesque end. So if you consider yourself one then dig into more pictures after the jump!
The list is in no particular order-
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 Heures 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 open-air sites.
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