A list of the most famous art pieces in human history. The artists, their titles and what they were known for in their respective time periods.

Votes were taken from 100 renowned art critics and historians, who ranked their favorites of all time:

* Leonardo da Vinci – Mona Lisa

* Michelangelo – David

* Rembrandt – Night Watch

* Caravaggio – Medusa

* Raphael – Portrait of Pope Leo X with Two Cardinals

* Botticelli – Birth of Venus

* Rubens – Judgement of Paris

* Picasso – Les Demoiselles d’Avignon

* Velazquez – Las Meninas

* Van Gogh – Starry Night.

“Mona Lisa,” “The Starry Night,” “The Thinker” — they’re all iconic works of art, but which is the most famous? The members of the art world don’t always agree. In 2012, British art collector and financier Adam Lindemann surveyed 100 famous collectors, curators, and critics to find out which pieces they believed would last through the ages.

Here’s a list of the top 10:

10. Georges Seurat, “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” (1884)

9. Henri Matisse, “The Red Studio” (1911-1912)

8. Pablo Picasso, “Boy Leading a Horse” (1905)

7. Wassily Kandinsky, “Rigid and Curved Lines” (1913)

6. Gustav Klimt, “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I” (1907)

5. Paul Gauguin, “Te Poipoi (The Seedling)” (1892)

4. Vincent van Gogh, “Sunflowers” (1889)

3. Edvard Munch, The Scream (1893)

2. Leonardo da Vinci, Mon

“The Scream” (1895) by Edvard Munch is one of the most famous art pieces created in the last century. It was voted the most “powerful” and “vibrant,” and one of the top ten paintings of all time.

The Mona Lisa, completed in 1507, is a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo. The painting was created during a time of artistic innovation and is regarded as a benchmark of quality for artists.

The portrait presents an enigmatic figure: the subject’s gaze is directed outside the picture space. The painting seems both to celebrate and to challenge the traditions of portraiture by objectifying the sitter and playing with her image.

The Mona Lisa has been displayed in many high-profile exhibitions throughout history. In 1962, the painting was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. It was recovered two years later by the Italian police, who identified Vincenzo Peruggia as the culprit. Peruggia had found work at the Louvre after being hired by a museum employee who was unaware that he was seeking to steal the expensive artwork.

The painting currently resides in its home at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France.**

Famous paintings and sculptures are not just pretty. They have meaning. For example, some famous artwork was created during a time of war to honor the people who fought in it. Some famous artwork was created to make people think about how humans are destroying the earth. Some famous artwork was created to make people think about what other cultures believed in.

TASTE IN ART

Different artists have different styles of art, just like different singers have different singing voices. Some famous artists used bright colors and drew scenes from their culture (for example, Pablo Picasso). Other famous artists used black and white and only drew objects (for example, Henri Matisse).

Some famous artists made art that is beautiful but confusing to look at (for example, Salvador Dali). Other artists made art that is less beautiful but easier to understand (for example, Andy Warhol).

Some famous artists let their emotions control them when they were making art (for example, Frida Kahlo). Other artists put more thought into what they were doing before they started it (for example, Vincent Van Gough).

ART AND POLITICS

Some famous artwork has been criticized for having political messages that the artist wanted the audience to get. One famous painting shows how African Americans were living under slavery

The Mona Lisa is one of the most famous works of art in the world. The painting, created by the Italian master Leonardo da Vinci between 1503 and 1519, depicts a woman gazing directly at the viewer with a mysterious smile on her lips.

Titled after the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, an official of the Florentine Republic who commissioned it, the portrait was painted with oils on a poplar panel. It has been called “a detailed and realistic portrait that captures the essence of human character.”

The Mona Lisa is displayed in the Louvre Museum in Paris and is one of the most famous paintings in history. In 1962, it was stolen from its frame by a Louvre employee. It was recovered two years later.

But even if it makes sense to think of a work of art as the result of some kind of selection process, the word “masterpiece” is misleading. It implies that a work of art is successful because it was carefully crafted to achieve that end. Yet we use the word “masterpiece” in a broader sense. We say, for example, that Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony is a masterpiece even though it wasn’t designed to be one. It just happened that way.

There are two different kinds of selection processes at work whenever there is something good happening: positive and negative. In a positive selection process, something good gets selected directly. If you want to make better cars, then you select among different designs for cars, trying to get better ones each time you go through the cycle.

In a negative selection process, you don’t know what end result you are aiming for or how many steps it will take to get there. You just try things randomly and keep what works best. The randomness is not a bug; it’s a feature—indeed, it’s the defining feature—of how evolution works.

The evolution of species is an example of a negative-selection process that gets talked about a lot these days because it is so familiar from biology