Articles

Fernando Botero, La carta, 1976; Banco de la República, 2000, Photograph by Víctor Robledo, © Museo Botero - Banco de la República via Google Arts & Culture

Samuel Reed

Botero's Most Underrated Paintings, Ranked by H...

Botero's fame rests on volume and satire, but a handful of his still lifes, portraits, and history paintings carry stories his popular reputation hides.

Albrecht Dürer, Self-Portrait with Thistle (detail), 1493, via Wikipedia/Public Domain

Sebastian Moore

Ranking Every Albrecht Dürer Self-Portrait by Fame

Long before Albrecht Dürer painted another person, he painted himself. Here’s every self-portrait he made, ranked from least to most famous.

Georges Seurat, The Circus (detail), 1890-91 © Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt via Musée d’Orsay

Arthur Kingsley

The 10 Most Ambitious Unfinished Masterpieces i...

Some of art history's most ambitious paintings were never finished, cut short by death, rejection, or a revolution too large for any canvas to keep pace with.

Giovanni Andrea Sirani, Ulysses and Circe (detail), c. 1650-55, Capitoline Museums, Rome. via Wikimedia Commons.

Samuel Reed

Homer's Odyssey in Art, Ranked by Dramatic Inte...

Ten depictions of Homer's Odyssey in art history, curated and ranked from least to most intense, tracing four centuries of painters staging the same epic.

Salvador Dalí, Portrait of Mrs. Ann W. Green and her Son Jonathan, 1963 via WikiArt/Public Domain

Eleanor Brooks

Salvador Dalí's Portraits Ranked by the Backlas...

A ranking of Salvador Dalí's most controversial society portraits, from subtly unflattering likenesses to a commission the sitter's own family rejected.

Gustav Klimt, Old Man on his Death-Bed, c. 1899 via Arthive

Jack Lowry

The Most Haunting Deathbed Portraits in Art His...

A ranking of the most haunting deathbed portraits in art history, spanning royal commissions, anonymous painters, and one strikingly unconventional final entry.

Arshile Gorky, Water of the Flowery Mill, 1944  © 2026 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York via The MET

Eliza Warren

Ranking the Abstract Expressionists, Least to M...

Ten Abstract Expressionist painters ranked by today's cultural recognition, with a look at the postwar movement that shaped them all.

Paula Rego, The Maids, 1987. Courtesy Marlborough Fine Art, © Paula Rego via AWARE Centre Pompidou

Margaret Allen

The Top 10 Most Disturbing Expressions in Art H...

These paintings reveal how artists transformed human expression into something eerie, theatrical, psychologically charged, and profoundly unsettling.

Balthus (Balthusz Klossowski de Rola), Study for “The Salon”, 1941 © Balthus via Gagosian.

Samuel Reed

Our Curated Ranking of The Best Balthus Paintings

A ranking of Balthus’s most significant paintings, tracing his staged realism, psychological tension, and precise approach to modern figuration.

Raphael, Saint Sebastian, 1501-02 via Wikipedia/Public Domain

Jack Lowry

Ranking Raphael’s Most Remarkable Sitting Portr...

A ranking of Raphael’s most remarkable sitting portraits, examining identity, patronage, and psychological presence across Renaissance painting.