Every art critic worth his salt has an opinion about the most controversial pieces of art history. Ours is that there is always at least one painting everyone hates and at least five people love.

Art history’s most controversial paintings vary from era to era. Right now, for example, people get very upset about Damien Hirst’s shark in a tank of formaldehyde, and about Chris Ofili’s elephant dung crucifix. But we’re old-fashioned: we think the most controversial painting of all time is The Rite of Spring.

You’d think that the most controversial painting ever would be something sexy like the Leda and the Swan. But no! It’s a ballet set to music by a Russian guy you’ve never heard of.

But here are five paintings we think are much more interesting, even if they don’t make you quite as mad as Nude Descending a Staircase or “anti-art” paintings do.

Art history is a battle between the new, the daring and the unprecedented, and the old, the familiar and the traditional. Here are five paintings that caused a stir when they were first made.

1. The Gross Clinic by Thomas Eakins

Eakins’ painting depicts Dr Samuel Gross performing an operation on a patient with a shattered kneecap. While most of his contemporaries preferred to show doctors operating in an idealised setting, Eakins opted to paint them doing their job in a real operating theatre. This painting caused outrage amongst American medical practitioners, who found its depiction of medical procedures unflattering and lurid.

Eakins was also criticised for using professional models – as opposed to actors – instead of paying amateurs to pose as doctors. He defended himself by saying that only doctors were qualified to pose as doctors: “Only members of the profession can realize what it is,” he said. “If I have chosen to make physicians my models, it is because it is part of their work to study anatomy and know about surgery.”

2. Olympia by Edouard Manet

Olympia shows a nude woman lying on a bed, being observed by a black servant in contemporary dress – which prompted Manet’s critics to ask whether he had

St. Jerome in the Wilderness by Caravaggio (1605)

The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew by Caravaggio (1601)

The Calling of St Matthew by Caravaggio (1599)

Saint Francis in Ecstasy by Bernini (1645)

The Beaneater by Dürer (1504)

These are five paintings that are either considered controversial or have been controversial at some point. They feature weirdness and shock value that has stayed with us for hundreds of years. The stories behind them are no less fascinating than their imagery. Yet, they are all paintings that your grandmom would not like.

This is a list of paintings you should look out for if you visit the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. With a fine selection of Botticelli, Raphael and other Renaissance greats, this is the place to be if you want to get into Renaissance art. But we have a few other suggestions for secret masterpieces that you might find tucked away in corners and hard to find. So let’s take a look at some of the most interesting paintings you can find at this major Florentine museum:

The Story of Nastagio degli Onesti by Sandro Botticelli

Art history is filled with paintings that people don’t understand. It is also filled with paintings that people do understand, but pretend they don’t because they want to seem sophisticated.

Art history is also filled with paintings that people do recognize as good, but only because they are familiar with them—they hear the name and see the brushstrokes, but have no idea what the painting is actually about.

Taste is subjective, and some of the most popular artists are not my favorites. But there are certain paintings where I am confident that even if you like them, you haven’t really seen them.*

The Nude Maja by Francisco Goya, is a portrait of the artist’s wife that was considered scandalous when it was first released in 1805.It is one of the first paintings to depict a nude woman in a natural setting, and shows Goya’s sophisticated grasp of the human form and his boldness as an artist.

In the portrait, Goya depicts his wife with a knowing smile on her face as she covers her breasts with her hands. Goya’s style has been described as “bold and masterly,” “the most coldly beautiful of all Spanish portraits,” and “the most misogynous picture in the world.” The painting has been censored many times over the years, whether it be from Spain under Franco or from Chicago schools in 1968. It has also been parodied countless times in pop culture, Ozzy Osbourne included.

The Rokeby Venus by Diego Velazquez portrays a nude woman lying on a bed whose face is turned away from the viewer. The depiction of the body is exceptional for its time period – there is no idealization or concept of beauty. Unlike other portraits at this time that aimed to portray only classically beautiful people, Velazquez painted someone who he saw as particularly beautiful, but who would have otherwise