30 World’s greatest artworks

These frescoes by Masolino da Panicale and Masaccio kicked off Renaissance painting, thanks primarily to Masaccio’s command of perspective, colour and the human figure. The image of Adam and Eve cast out of Paradise is a tear-jerker par excellence. @Brancacci Chapel, Florence.

Radiant, vivacious and profoundly real, the Biblical frescoes that decorate this chapel are the work of Giotto, who is considered the father of modern art. For the first time, we see a Mary who is truly grief-stricken and an angel really flying. @Scrovegni Chapel, Padua.

With its golden skin and obsidian eyes decorated with lapis lazuli, the mask of the 18-year-old Egyptian king possesses a mystic, all-knowing power that mesmerises all who look upon it. @Egyptian Museum, Cairo.

With her strawberries-and-cream complexion balanced by a china-blue turban, this beauty is an enigma. Was she a Dutch dairymaid? Or an exotic temptress? Vermeer’s genius is to reveal that one lurks within the other. @Mauritshuis, The Hague.

A battle distilled to limbs, screaming faces and that tragic, terrified horse – the horror of war has never been captured more forcefully than in Picasso’s canvas, inspired by the bombing of the eponymous Basque town. @Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid.

Michelangelo said his mission was to find the statue within the stone – and how he succeeded with this vision of Mary grieving over her dead boy. His limp limbs and her downcast gaze seem less marble than real flesh. As he intended, their beauty suggests the hand of the Divine. @St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City.

Just what is the subject of this magnificent, mystifying painting? The painter at work in his studio? The princess with her little dog? Or the royal couple reflected in the mirror? Few pictures hypnotise quite like Velazquez’s Spanish puzzle. @Prado Museum, Madrid.

Manet’s still-shocking depiction of this fleshy nude – shamelessly picnicking with her two suited-and-booted male companions – scandalised 19th-century Paris and paved the way for Impressionism. @Orsay Museum, Paris.

Picasso’s revolutionary quintet of prostitutes – nearer to tribal wood carvings than traditional painted nudes – paved the way for Cubism and Abstract art. Deemed scandalous in its day, the haughty, unflinching stares are as provocative as ever. @MoMA, New York City.

The smoky smile, the distant gaze, that Tolkien-esque landscape – every element of Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous painting adds to its exquisite, enigmatic power. @Louvre Museum, Paris.

This famous lilac-hued mountain presides over the green and gold Provencal plain, where blue-walled houses echo the sky. Cezanne borrowed from the Old Masters and Impressionism to make pictures unlike any seen before. Without him, Picasso would never have existed. @Courtauld Gallery, London.

There are leaves and blossoms, reflections and ripples, but Monet’s orgy of deliquescent colour – lilac, buttercream, dusky pink, ivy, ocean blue – also makes his beloved Giverny gardens a key inspiration for abstract painters. @Orangerie Museum, Paris.

Aiming to unite art, spirituality and human rights, this sanctuary holds visitors spellbound thanks to its 14 canvases by contemporary painter Mark Rothko – shimmering, fathomless lakes of blackness that soothe the soul and silence the mind. @Rothko Chapel, Houston.

The raised finger, the direct gaze, the aura of stillness – this self-portrait of Albrecht Durer, one of the earliest set in frontal pose, recalls Christ in the act of blessing. Certainly, Durer’s gift bears comparison with the supreme Creator. @Alte Pinakothek, Munich.

Potent colours, a great storyline and a line-up of Renaissance calendar boys make Michelangelo’s chronicle of world creation as compelling now as it was when it was painted 500 years ago. @Vatican Museums, The Vatican.

Caravaggio’s triumph of light and shade, spatial depth and human emotion leaps into life in this thrilling triptych, which tells the story of St. Matthew’s transformation from tax collector to martyr. @Contarelli Chapel, Rome.

Seurat’s work is the ultimate celebration of secular, bourgeois leisure. The Pointillist scene – which captures Parisians relaxing on the banks of the Seine – sums up the ‘modern life’ that was the holy grail of French avant-garde painting. @Art Institute, Chicago.

One of the earliest paintings in oil, Van Eyck’s portrait of an Italian merchant and his wife in their home in Bruges is packed with captivating, period detail – her ermine-line robed, those exotic oranges – testifying to their wealth and status. @National Gallery, London.

No painting expresses the human passion for life, rhythm and energy better than Matisse’s fantasy of taut, muscular figures dancing hand-in-hand as if their world were reduced to a single pulsating circle of colour. @The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.

Captured in a silvery, brooding light, Constable’s scene of a hay wagon standing in a river prefigures Impressionism, creating a moment that is fleeting, timeless and more evocative than any photograph. @National Gallery, London.

Glowing with fiery colours and centred on an anguished crucifixion scene, Grunewald’s vast altarpiece was painted for a monastery that cared for plague victims and is a homage to holy, redemptive suffering. @Unterlinden Museum, Colmar.

A flawless, Renaissance miss with the world’s most elegant rodent in her arms. Check out the way the ermine’s sinuous torso echoes the woman’s long fingers and elegant neck – and marvel at Da Vinci’s brilliance. @Czartoryski Museum, Krakow.

A platoon of musketeers emerge from darkness into light. Or do they? The sharp, strange contrasts of gleam and shadow in Rembrandt’s masterpiece have baffled critics for centuries. But its sheer beauty makes it a pleasure to untangle for yourself. @Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

The sight of Christ, ivory-pale and oak-solid, rising from his sepulchre against the Tuscan dawn, will inspire the most secular soul. Piero was a mathematician as well as a painter, and his grasp of geometry helped him reach near-Platonic heights of perfection. @Sansepolcro Civic Museum, Tuscany.

So strange was Van Gogh’s way of seeing the world – butter-yellow moon, swirling cornflower-blue sky, cypresses squishy as plasticine – it’s little wonder he ended up in an asylum, where he painted this surreal night scene. @MoMA, New York City.

A brooding sky, a suckling babe, a mysterious soldier. Who? What? Why? Nobody knows the story behind Giorgione’s perfect storm of a painting whose narrative, neither mythical nor religious, makes it unlike any other picture of the period. @Accademia Gallery, Venice.

Hang on a minute, says the Virgin, raising one finger. That’s it. The most minimalist annunciation in art history. No angel, no dove. Just a woman looking up from her book in disbelief. Technically it’s perfection, and Antonello da Messina’s emotion takes your breath away. @Palazzo Abatellis, Palermo.

A rare example of ancient Greek sculpture, rather than a Roman copy, the Venus de Milo may be missing the odd limb but her sumptuous, fluid curves bestow enormous eroticism. @Louvre Museum, Paris.

This army of perfectly crafted, life-size terracotta soldiers – made as a memorial to Emperor Qin Shi Huang of China, who is also buried here – are China’s most compelling monument. At once moving, majestic and curiously vulnerable.

Extracted from a shelter in the Drakensberg Mountains, these exquisite images of antelopes and humans in delicate tones of red and white were made by the San, a tribe of bushmen. This is one of the world’s foremost examples of rock art. @Iziko South African Museum, Cape Town.