One Hundred and the Top Ten Famous Paintings in the World

The other day, I posted the top ten most popular or visited art museums in the world. Today I am posting the top 100 and top ten most famous and known paintings.  How many of these paintings have you seen or are you aware of ?

Photo Credit: Pinterest  Original Mona Lisa at the Lourve- #1 most Famous Painting

I was looking at a video listing 100 famous paintings in the world. I was surprised that none of Gaugin's painting was listed, but happy that one of Juan Luna's painting(#67) titled Las Damas Romanas was in the list (see description at bottom of this article). Juan Luna is one of Filipino most famous painter during the Spanish occupation of the Philippines. 

The "Mona Lisa" was exhibited on January 8, 1963 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.  Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, was exhibited for the first time in America on January 8, 1963. Over 2,000 dignitaries, including President John F. Kennedy, came out that evening to view the famous painting. The next day, the exhibit opened to the public, and during the next three weeks an estimated 500,000 people came to see it. The painting then traveled to New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it was seen by another million people.

Leonardo da Vinci, one of the great Italian Renaissance painters, completed the Mona Lisa, a portrait of the wife of wealthy Florentine citizen Francesco del Gioconda, in 1504. The painting, also known as La Gioconda, depicts the figure of a woman with an enigmatic facial expression that is both aloof and alluring, seated before a visionary landscape. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and Andre Malraux, the French minister of culture, arranged the loan of the painting from the Louvre Museum in Paris to the United States.

Meanwhile, here's my painting by an unknown artist titled Morion. I purchased this for $5 in 2010 during our stay at our second home in Boac, Marinduque, Philippines.
 

The following video list 100 popular paintings and 30 honorable mentions. I am pretty sure you recognize the top ten most popular art work as shown in the 2 videos below. 

Here are the videos for your viewing pleasure: I have seen four of the top twelve in the museums where they are exhibited. Enjoy!!

 

  

This is #10 on the List- Creation of Adam-  Macrine(RIP) and I saw this at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel during our tour at the Vatican Museum in 1990

Artist: Michelangelo Date: 1508 to 1512 Where to see it: Sistine Chapel (Vatican City)

 

The most famous work by renowned artist Michelangelo covers a section of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling -- you have to look up to view it. The scene depicts God and Adam with outstretched arms, their fingers nearly touching. It is one of the most replicated images in history. Adam's muscular form hints at Michelangelo's other talent -- his "David" is possibly the world's most famous sculpture. You can see the towering marble statue at the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence.

 

Photo Credit: Wikipedia  Juan Luna Las Damas Romanas #67 in the List of 100

Las Damas Romanas (literally, "The Roman Dames"), also known as The Roman Maidens, The Roman Women, or The Roman Ladies, is an oil on canvas painting by Juan Luna, one of the most important Filipino painters of the Spanish period in the Philippines. It was painted by Luna when he was a student of the school of painting in the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando (Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando) in Madrid, Spain in 1877. Alejo Valera, a Spanish painting teacher, took Luna as an apprentice and brought him to Rome where Luna created Las Damas Romanas in 1882. Luna spent six years in Rome from 1878 to 1884.

Description: The concept for the 100 cm x 170 cm size painting was based by Luna on ancient Roman history. It depicted a domestic scene in ancient Roman life, portraying two women lying on the steps of a house. The hand of one woman was holding the reins of two pet dogs or hunting dogs, in order to prevent them from scaring away some doves. The doves symbolized divinity^.  The background of the painting presented a shelf of artifacts. To the left of the shelf was a shrine with a pediment shaped like a triangle. In front of the pediment was a burner with a smoking incense.

There are three major elements of Las Damas Romanas, namely the women, the dogs, and the doves. Roman life involved having dogs because they were employed by the ancient Romans for hunting activities, guardians of the home and their property, and as pets. In Luna's painting, the leashed pet dogs were acting as companions of women. Doves, on the other hand, were animals that connote eroticism.  In relation to one of the women, there was a suggestion that the woman on the right with dark hair could be Maria de la Paz Pardo de Tavera. The notion was discarded because Luna was unmarried when he painted Las Damas Romanas.

Luna finished Las Damas Romanas after winning a silver medal for The Death of Cleopatra painting in 1881 and before obtaining a gold medal for the masterpiece Spoliarium in 1884 (both were presented during the Madrid Exposition during the years mentioned). In 1886, Luna was awarded a Diploma of Honor at the Munich Art Exposition (also known as the Munich Salon) for painting Las Damas Romanas. The masterpiece was a classic work painted in the highest conventions of the academic style, and it was a representative of the "abundant richness of life, with humankind", represented by women in the painting, being "in harmony with Nature"

Valuation: Long thought lost or missing, the painting emerged in an estate sale outside Paris, France, before 2008. During this art auction, the painting was originally priced between 10,000 and 20,000 euros (₱623,000 and ₱1.3 million), a range that rose to greater than 200,000 euros (₱12.4 million) when the painting was bought by a French art dealer. 

The painting was auctioned once again on November 30, 2008, at Christie's in Hong Kong with an estimated value ranging from $1 million to $1.2 million, the equivalent of HK$8,000,000 to HK$10,000,000. The work sold for far less than the estimate, however, achieving $609,193, or HK$4,700,000, including buyer's premium.