Leonardo da Vinci | Ultima Cena / Last Supper, 1494-1498

Last Supper, one of the most famous artworks in the world, painted by Leonardo da Vinci probably between 1494 and 1498 for the Dominican monastery Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan.

It depicts the dramatic scene described in several closely connected moments in the Gospels, including Matthew 26:21–28, in which Jesus declares that one of the Apostles will betray him and later institutes the Eucharist.

According to Leonardo’s belief that posture, gesture, and expression should manifest the “notions of the mind”, each one of the 12 disciples reacts in a manner that Leonardo considered fit for that man’s personality.

The result is a complex study of varied human emotion, rendered in a deceptively simple composition.

Leonardo da Vinci | Ultima Cena / Last Supper, 1494-1498 | Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan

Andrea Mantegna | La Camera degli Sposi, 1465-1474

The Camera degli Sposi ("bridal chamber"), sometimes known as the Camera picta ("picture chamber"), is a room frescoed with illusionistic paintings by Andrea Mantegna in the Ducal Palace, Mantua, Italy.

During the fifteenth century when the Camera degli Sposi was painted, Mantua was ruled by the Gonzaga, who maintained Mantua's political autonomy from its much stronger neighbors Milan and Venice by bidding their support out as a mercenary state.

By commissioning Mantegna to paint the chamber, Ludovico III Gonzaga, the Marquis of Mantua, sought to give the Gonzaga rule more cultural credibility at a time when other Northern Italian courts such as the Ferrara were commissioning their own "painted chambers".

William Shakespeare | All the world's a stage / Tutto il mondo è un palcoscenico

"All the world's a stage" is the phrase that begins a monologue from William Shakespeare's pastoral comedy As You Like It (believed to have been written in 1599 and first published in the First Folio in 1623), spoken by the melancholy Jaques in Act II Scene VII Line 139.

The speech compares the world to a stage and life to a play and catalogues the seven stages of a man's life, sometimes referred to as the Seven Ages of Man.

Nicola d'Ascenzo (1871-1954) | Seven Ages of Man, stained glass

Located at the west end of the Old Reading Room, the "Seven Ages of Man" window is by the Philadelphia stained-glass studio of Nicola d'Ascenzo.

Modeled after the stone tracery of the apse window of Stratford's Holy Trinity Church, he stained glass within the stonework depicts the "Seven Ages of Man" that Jaques describes in "As You Like It".

Masterpieces of the Pinacoteca di Brera

The collection of the Pinacoteca di Brera includes some of the greatest masterpieces of Italian and foreign art from the 13th to the 20th century.

The works are displayed on the first floor of the building, where the Academy of Fine Arts is also located.

The Pinacoteca museum, which opened in 1809 thanks to Napoleon Bonaparte, was born as a collection of the finest works of art and was dedicated to the education of students.

The collection included Italian art masterpieces taken from churches and monasteries that were suppressed at the time when Milan was the capital city of the Kingdom of Italy. | Source: © Pinacoteca di Brera

Antonio Canova (Italian, 1757-1822) | Napoleone come Marte pacificatore / Napoleon as Mars the peacemaker, 1811 (detail) | Pinacoteca di Brera

Rogier van der Weyden | Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin, 1435-40

Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin is a large oil and tempera on oak panel painting, usually dated between 1435-1440, attributed to the Early Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden (1399/1400 - 1464).

The painting is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

According to tradition, Saint Luke created the first portraits of the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus from life, making him the patron saint of painters.

Here, in one of the most important Renaissance paintings in North America, Rogier van der Weyden introduces an unprecedented sense of naturalism, grounding a sacred episode in everyday experience.

5 Masterpieces at the Uffizi Gallery

The Uffizi Gallery entirely occupies the first and second floors of the large building constructed between 1560-1580 and designed by Giorgio Vasari.

It is famous worldwide for its outstanding collections of ancient sculptures and paintings (from the Middle Ages to the Modern period).

The collections of paintings from the 14th-century and Renaissance period include some absolute masterpieces: Giotto, Simone Martini, Piero della Francesca, Beato Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, Mantegna, Correggio, Leonardo, Raffaello, Michelangelo and Caravaggio, in addition to many precious works by European painters (mainly German, Dutch and Flemish).

Moreover, the Gallery boasts an invaluable collection of ancient statues and busts from the Medici family, which adorns the corridors and consists of ancient Roman copies of lost Greek sculptures.

Johan Zoffany (1733-1810) | Tribuna of the Uffizi, 1772-1777 | Royal Collection (UK)

5 Masterpieces of The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents over 5,000 years of art from around the world for everyone to experience and enjoy.

The Museum lives in two iconic sites in New York City - The Met Fifth Avenue and The Met Cloisters.

Millions of people also take part in The Met experience online.

Since its founding in 1870, The Met has always aspired to be more than a treasury of rare and beautiful objects.

Every day, art comes alive in the Museum's galleries and through its exhibitions and events, revealing new ideas and unexpected connections across time and across cultures.

Guido Reni | The Immaculate Conception, 1627

Guido Reni (Bologna, 1575-1642), during his lifetime the most celebrated living painter in Italy, was famous for the elegance of his compositions and the beauty and grace of his heads, earning him the epithet "Divine".

This altarpiece, with its otherworldly space shaped by clouds and putti in a high-keyed palette, was commissioned in about 1627 by the Spanish ambassador in Rome for the infanta of Spain.

It later hung in the cathedral of Seville, where it deeply influenced Spanish painters, especially Bartolomé Estebán Murillo, whose workshop produced many iterations of this subject.

The Immaculate Conception became a symbol of the universality of the Catholic Church and was used for the conversion of populations across Spain’s global empire. | Source: © Metropolitan Museum of Art

Guido Reni (Italian, 1575-1642) | The Immaculate Conception, 1627 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

8 Notable artworks at the Cleveland Museum of Art

The Cleveland Museum of Art is renowned for the quality and breadth of its collection, which includes more than 63,000 artworks and spans 6,000 years of achievement in the arts.

The museum is a significant international forum for exhibitions, scholarship, and performing arts and is a leader in digital innovations.

One of the top comprehensive art museums in the nation, recognized for its award-winning Open Access program and free of charge to all, the Cleveland Museum of Art is located in the University Circle neighborhood.

John French Sloan | A woman's work, 1912 | Cleveland Museum of Art

Trained as a journalist, the young John French Sloan (1871-1951) explored social issues more vigorously than most of the painters of his time, portraying working-class urbanites engaged in ordinary activities.

He observed this particular scene through a rear window of his Manhattan apartment.

Perched on a narrow fire escape, a woman hangs fresh laundry to dry on clotheslines strung between tenements.

As evidenced by the painting, the labors of American women at the turn of the 1900s were most often confined to the domestic realm. | Source: © Cleveland Museum of Art

John French Sloan (American, 1871-1951) | A woman's work, 1912 | Cleveland Museum of Art