The ten most famous paintings in the world, and where they hang

How do you decide which paintings are the most famous?

There is no official list, so fame has to be judged by what can be observed: how often a painting is reproduced on posters, book covers and fridge magnets, how many people travel to see it, and how often other artists quote it. By those measures the same ten works come up again and again. The order below is not a ranking, because any ranking would be invented.

What are the ten, and where are they?

Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci, about 1503 to 1519

The Mona Lisa hangs in the Louvre in Paris, behind protective glass. It is painted in oil on a poplar wood panel and measures only about 77 by 53 centimetres. Look for sfumato, Leonardo's technique of blending tones so softly that there are no hard outlines, especially at the corners of the mouth and eyes. The painting became world news in 1911, when a former Louvre worker, Vincenzo Peruggia, stole it. It was recovered in Florence in 1913.

The Last Supper, Leonardo da Vinci, about 1495 to 1498

The Last Supper is painted directly on the wall of the refectory, the old dining hall, of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, so it has never moved. Leonardo painted on dry plaster rather than in true fresco, the technique of painting into wet plaster, and the paint began to flake within his lifetime. A restoration finished in 1999 after more than twenty years of work. Visits are timed and booked in advance.

The Birth of Venus, Sandro Botticelli, about 1485

The Birth of Venus is in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Look for the goddess arriving on a scallop shell, blown ashore by the wind god Zephyr, and for Botticelli's flowing, graceful line. It is painted in tempera, pigment bound with egg or glue, which gives it its pale, matte surface.

The Night Watch, Rembrandt van Rijn, 1642

The Night Watch hangs in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and it is not a night scene. It shows a civic militia company in daylight, and the darkness came from layers of varnish that yellowed over time. The canvas was trimmed on all sides in 1715 to fit a wall in Amsterdam's town hall. Since 2019 the museum has studied and treated it in public view, in a project called Operation Night Watch.

Girl with a Pearl Earring, Johannes Vermeer, about 1665

Girl with a Pearl Earring is in the Mauritshuis in The Hague. It is not a portrait of a known person but a tronie, a Dutch term for a study of a face, a type or an expression. Look for the turban in ultramarine blue and yellow, the light catching the pearl, and the dark, plain background that makes the face seem to step forward.

The Starry Night, Vincent van Gogh, 1889

The Starry Night is in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Van Gogh painted it while living at the asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, based on the view from his window, with the village partly imagined. Look for the swirling sky, the flame-like cypress in the foreground and paint laid on thickly enough to cast small shadows.

The Scream, Edvard Munch, 1893

The best known painted version of The Scream is in the National Museum in Oslo, and the Munch Museum in the same city holds other versions. Munch made the motif several times, in paint, in pastel and as a lithograph. A pastel version sold at Sotheby's in New York in 2012 for 119.9 million dollars. Look for the figure on the bridge, hands to its face, under a sky of burning orange and red.

The Kiss, Gustav Klimt, 1907 to 1908

The Kiss is in the Upper Belvedere in Vienna, and it is the best known work of Viennese Art Nouveau. The Austrian state bought it in 1908, the year it was first shown. Look for real gold leaf, the contrast between his rectangles and her circles in the patterned robes, and the edge of the flower meadow where the couple kneel.

The Persistence of Memory, Salvador Dalí, 1931

The Persistence of Memory is in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and it surprises nearly everyone by its size: about 24 by 33 centimetres, smaller than a sheet of A4 turned sideways. Look for the melting pocket watches, the rocky coast of Catalonia, and the strange sleeping form in the centre.

Guernica, Pablo Picasso, 1937

Guernica is in the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid. Picasso painted it for the Spanish pavilion at the 1937 International Exposition in Paris, after the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica that April. It is almost eight metres wide and painted only in black, white and grey. Picasso asked that it should not go to Spain until democracy returned there, and it arrived in 1981.

What surprises people when they see these paintings in person?

Size, almost always. Reproductions make every painting the same size, so the real proportions come as a shock. The Mona Lisa and The Persistence of Memory are small enough to carry under one arm. The Night Watch and Guernica fill a wall. The second surprise is surface. A poster flattens everything, but up close Van Gogh's paint stands up from the canvas, Klimt's gold catches the light as you move, and the cracks in a Vermeer are visible from a step away.

Is the famous painting in your home a print, and how should you describe it?

If it is one of these ten, it is a copy, because every original is in a museum. That does not make it worthless or uninteresting, but it changes how it should be written down. The art world uses the word after for this: a work "after Vincent van Gogh" is a copy or version of his work made by someone else.

There are three common kinds of copy, and they are worth telling apart.

1. An offset reproduction. A mass-produced print. Under a magnifying glass it shows a regular pattern of tiny coloured dots.
2. A giclée. A high-quality inkjet print, often on canvas. The dots are finer and irregular, and the surface is completely flat, with no brush marks.
3. A painted copy. A copy made by hand in oil or acrylic. It has real texture, and an older painted copy can have value and a history of its own.

In your records, write the title, the original artist with the word after, the kind of copy, and the size of yours, for example: "The Starry Night, after Vincent van Gogh, giclée on canvas, 60 by 75 cm". Add where and when you got it. That one line is enough for an insurer, an heir or a buyer to understand exactly what it is, and it keeps a copy from ever being mistaken for something it is not.