Five of the Most Famous Paintings in the World

The Creation of Adam:

Painted by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City between 1508-1512. This painting represents the moment when humanity was created through the hands of God.

The Birth of Venus:

Painted by Sandro Botticelli between 1485-1486. This painting depicts the goddess Venus arriving at the shore after her birth, when she had emerged from the sea fully-grown.

The Gleaners:

Painted by Jean-Francois Millet in 1857. This painting depicts three peasant women gleaning a field of stray stalks of wheat after the harvest.

The Gross Clinic:

Painted by Thomas Eakins in 1875. This painting portrays Dr Samuel D. Gross, a seventy-year-old professor dressed in a black frock coat, lecturing a group of Jefferson Medical College students.  They were performing bone surgery on a young man, while a figure that looks like the patient’s mother recoils nearby.

Whistler’s Mother:

Painted by James Abbott McNeill Whistler in 1871. The painting portrays the peak of Whistler’s radical method of moderating tones of single colors. The figure in the painting is said to be Whistler’s mother.