Van Gogh produced many self-portraits in his lifetime; this was one of his earliest to use lighter colors and an almost pointillist technique. Van Gogh used the reverse side of an earlier peasant study, The Potato Peeler (1885), which employs a darker palette. 

Monet, an avid gardener, returned time and again to the subject of water lilies over his career. This image, the most clicked-on in The Met’s online collections, is one of the few vertical ones from a series focused on this footbridge. 

During the 1870s, Degas spent a lot of time at the Paris Opera house observing ballerinas in their element. This scene depicts a rehearsal at which two dozen dancers stretch, twist and await instructions from real-life ballet master Jules Perrot.

Born into a family of sculptors, Calder was an engineering student before switching to art. Inspired by Miró and the Dada movement, he created balanced, kinetic sculptures—such as this metal and wire one—that Marcel Duchamp dubbed “mobiles.”

Rembrandt portrays the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, draped in rich clothing and a gold chain gifted to him by his pupil, Alexander the Great, resting his hand on a bust of Homer. The use of light suggests a physical manifestation of intellect. 

Three years into his experimentation with drip technique, Pollock executed this large-scale piece. For such paintings, he placed an unstretched canvas on the floor, onto which he dripped, poured, splashed and splattered pigment. 

This Romantic sculpture depicts a real-life incident from canto XXXIII of Dante’s Inferno, in which Count Ugolino della Gherardesca, his sons and grandsons are left to starve to death in a tower in Pisa by order of Archbishop Ruggieri. 

This large stone slab, from the Neo-Assyrian Empire, was part of a wall panel from the Northwest Palace at Nimrud (part of modern-day Iraq). The hand-carved cuneiform on the lower half lists the military achievements of Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II.  

Backed by a former California governor, Muybridge set out to record a galloping horse in hopes of determining whether all four hooves were off the ground at the same time. In the process of confirming the premise, he invented stop-action photography.

This altarpiece, Raphael’s only one on exhibit in the United States, is emblematic of Italian Renaissance art thanks to its religious subject matter, classic form and elaborate color and detail. 

There’s some question of this painting’s provenance, though the subject matter and style are certainly typical of Goya, who used palette knife, rags and his fingers to apply thick coats of paint—investing his art with emotional tension.