The Gallery Walk · A walk through great paintings

Six centuries · Ten periods · Eighty-seven masterpieces

From Botticelli's Venus to Van Gogh's night sky, every painting has a story. Scroll slowly and step inside.

The Starry NightVincent van Gogh, June 1889

A walk through great paintings

Here you will find eighty-seven of the most celebrated paintings in Western art. Each comes with its background, an analysis of technique, a reading of its symbols and a few stories, and you can zoom in close enough to see the brushstrokes. Browse by period, artist, museum or date, or test yourself with a quiz.

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Periods

From the rational order of the Renaissance to the passion of Romanticism and the abstraction of modern art.

Renaissance

1400–1520 · 8 works

Humanity at the centre, and the rediscovered order and beauty of the classical world.

Northern Renaissance

1430–1580 · 5 works

A microscopic world in oil paint, where every hair and every reflection is rendered with care.

Baroque

1600–1720 · 9 works

A shaft of light in the darkness, and a dramatic instant that moves the viewer.

Rococo

1720–1780 · 3 works

Pastels, silks and flirtation in the garden: the lighthearted hours of the aristocratic salon.

Neoclassicism

1760–1830 · 4 works

The virtue and reason of ancient Rome, answering an age of revolution.

Romanticism

1790–1850 · 19 works

Feeling over reason: the sublime in nature and the passions of the heart.

Realism

1840–1880 · 8 works

No idealising, no sermons: painters show workers and daily life as they are.

Impressionism

1860–1890 · 13 works

Out of the studio to catch the flicker of light at a single moment.

Post-Impressionism

1886–1905 · 14 works

Beyond recording light: colour and structure express inner feeling and order.

Modern

1900–1930 · 4 works

Farewell to representation; towards expression and abstraction.

In focus