Best Paintings of all Time

Diego Rivera's (1886-1957) Man at the Crossroads was an instant classic the moment Rivera decided to add to the to the huge fresco the controversial Lenin portrait in a painting who would reside inside the Rockefeller Center which is something like a capitalism temple. The painting was destroyed becoming immortalized in the process and since it's recreation by the badass Rivera in Mexico it became an instant success.

Rosa Bonheur's (1822-1899) The Horse Fair is one beautiful painting. The light, the composition, everything works fine there and it's in my opinion the best and most realistic horses ever painted.

Another one of Lucian Freud that is a favorite of mine is Two Irishmen in W11. Just look at the details of the hands of the older man. It's fabulous.

Best Paintings of all Time

Altdorfer's (1480-1538) Battle of Issus is another great painting. It's probably one of the very few paintings ever to depict an entire war in just one panel.

Paolo Uccello's (1397-1475) The Counterattack of Michelotto da Cotignola at the Battle of San Romano is damaged by time, but still a very beautiful painting with great composition, and has inspired many other paintings through the ages.

Gustaf Wappers (1803-1874) ‘Episodes from September Days 1830 on the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville in Brussels’ is another great painting probably created inspired by Delacroix and Géricault’s more famous paintings. I still love it anyway.

Best Paintings of all Time

Rembrandt's (1606-1669) Nightwatch (1640-1642) is another favorite of mine. It had different  interpretations through the times and it has been a constant presence in best painting lists.

Different interpretations is something that Poussin's (1594-1665) The Shepherds of Arcadia has been submited through the ages perharps more than any other painting except for Da Vinci's paintings. I just love all this mystery.

Tintoretto's (1518-1594) Crucifixion is also a tremendous panel that is one of my favorites. A master at depicting muscular figures, Tintoretto delivered his best in this one.

Best Paintings of all Time

The powerful painting of Pieter Bruegel, the Elder (1525-1569) about The Tower of Babel. In Bruegel's painting it was a roman to medieval european view of a gigantic tower and very different from the real one, but still very impressive.

Rafael Sanzio's (1483-1520) School of Athens is another well known painting that I added to my list. It depicts a fantastic encounter of the most brilliant minds of ancient Greece, and with the great renaissance masters such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Rafael himself used as the models. I think it can't get any better than that.

And Jan Van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece who did here something very special. His incredible details of the expressions, beautiful faces (especially the females), mastery in using lightning effects on different kinds of material like gold, glass, fabrics and others makes this a masterpiece. Painting like that in the early 15th century was completely unexpected. In some aspects he was centuries ahead of his fellow painters with techniques that looked like 3D. And I can't stop thinking that there's some hidden message in the detail of Mary Magdalene with a younger lady by her side in the inner right-hand panel.

Best Paintings of all Time

It would never be a list of the best paintings of all time without Michelangelo (1475-1564). So here it is. Not much need to be said about it, just admired.

The Sistine Chapel ceiling (1508-1512)

 And The Last Judgment (1536-1541)

Best Paintings of all Time

And now the paintings from masters of the Peredvizhniki, the old russian school of realism. First Vasily Polenov's (1844 –1927) 'Christ and Woman taken in adultery'. What I like most here is that Christ and all the details in the canvas look a lot more with what you would expect from when and where Jesus lived. Something very different from the blonde/auburn haired Jesus from Renaissance.

The next one is Ilya Repin's (1844–1930) Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks (1891). It portrays the infamous for some and priceless for most, reply of the Cossack military leader Ivan Sirko to the ottoman sultan.

Best Paintings of all Time

Two paintings who obviously should be here. Both represented the turmoil in which France went between the 18th and 19th centuries, with both moments being majestically captured by Gericault and Delacroix in their paintings.

The Raft of the Medusa (1819) by Géricault (1791–1824)

 

 Liberty Leading the People (1830) by Delacroix (1798–1863)