Basic List of Key Western Artworks for Schools

Where to start with decorating your school? Or doing a survey of western art with your kids that doesn't get too weird?

I've gone over these to make sure they would generally be ones appropriate for a Christian school - so I've tried to exclude classical artwork with nudity from the list, the one main exception being the work of Michelangelo. (Also, Botticelli's Primavera has some goddesses in diaphanous garments)

Please note these are in rough chronological order, not in order of importance.

Medieval Artists (International Gothic & Manuscript Miniaturists)

Fouquet - Manuscript Paintings from the Hours of Etienne Chevalier

Simone Martini – Annunciation  

Gentile da Fabriano – Adoration of the Magi (1423)

The Limbourg Brothers – Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (1412–16)

The Boucicaut Master

Jean Pucelle – Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux (c. 1325)

Early Italian Renaissance

Giotto - Frescoes

Masaccio – The Tribute Money (1420s)

Fra Angelico – Annunciation (c. 1440–45)

Piero della Francesca – The Flagellation of Christ

Paolo Uccello – Battle of San Romano (c. 1438–40), The Hunt in the Forest (c. 1470)

Ghirlandaio - The Life of the Virgin; Portraits

Andrea del Castagno – The Last Supper (1447)

Benozzo Gozzoli – Procession of the Magi (1459)

Sandro Botticelli – Portrait of a Young Woman; Primavera

Early Netherlandish Art & the Northern Renaissance

Jan van Eyck – Ghent Altarpiece(1432), the Arnolfini Portrait

Rogier van der Weyden – Descent from the Cross (c. 1435)

Hans Memling – Scenes from The Passion

Petrus Christus – A Goldsmith in His Shop (1449), The Annunciation

Hans Holbein the Younger – The Ambassadors (1533)

Hieronymus Bosch – The Temptation of St. anthony

Pieter Breugel the Elder - Hunters in the Snow; The Harvesters; Babel; The Triumph of Death; Landscape with the Fall of Icarus; The Fall of the Rebel Angels

Robert Campin - Annunciation

Albrecht Dürer – The Knight, Death and the Devil (1513); Melancholy; The Four Horsemen;  St. Jerome in His Study (1514)

The High Renaissance

Leonardo da Vinci – The Last Supper (1495–98), Mona Lisa

Michelangelo – The Sistine Chapel; his sculptures

Raphael – The School of Athens (1510–11)

Titian – Pieta

Giovanni Bellini – Saint Mark Preaching

Perugino – Delivery of the Keys to Saint Peter (1481–82)

Mannerists

Pontormo – Deposition from the Cross (1528)

Bronzino – Portrait of Eleanor of Toledo and Her Son (1545)

Parmigianino – Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror

Tintoretto – Last Supper

Veronese – The Wedding at Cana (1563); Last Supper

Rosso Fiorentino – Descent from the Cross (1521)

Dutch Golden Age

Rembrandt – The Night Watch (1642); Belshazzar's Feast; Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee; Syndics of the Draper's Guild

Vermeer – The Girl with the Pearl Earring; the Milkmaid; Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window

Jacob van Ruisdael – Landscapes

Old Master etchings

Van Dyck - Triple Portrait of King Charles; other portraits

Baroque

Caravaggio – The Calling of St. Matthew (1599–1600); Doubting Thomas; St Jerome

Peter Paul Rubens –  the Tiger Hunt; the Hippopotamus and Crocodile Hunt

Diego Velázquez – Las Meninas (1656)

Nicolas Poussin –  Et in Arcadia Ego; Death of Germanicus

Claude Lorrain – Landscapes

Georges de La Tour – The Newborn Christ; Magdalene at a Mirror

18th Century Artists, Neoclassicism

Jean-Antoine Watteau – Embarkation for Cythera (1717)

Tiepolo - The Banquet of Cleopatra; Apollo and the Continents

Fragonard – The Reader

Jacques-Louis David – Oath of the Horatii (1784); The Death of Socrates; Napoleon Crossing the Alps; the Coronation of Napoleon

Ingres – Napoleon on His Imperial Throne (1806)

Benjamin West – The Death of General Wolfe (1770); Death of Admiral Nelson

John Hoppner - portraits

Sir Joshua Reynolds - Portraits

John Trumbull - Declaration of Independence

Romanticism

Caspar David Friedrich – Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818); Two Men Contemplating the Moon

JMW Turner - Landscapes

Constable – The Hay Wain (1821); Wivenhoe Park; Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows

John Martin - Seventh plague of Egypt

Delaroche - Lady Jane Grey

William Blake - Four Horsemen

Pre-Raphaelites

Millais – Ophelia (1851–52);  Sir Isumbras at the Ford

Holman Hunt – The Savior in the Temple

Burne-Jones – Love Among the Ruins; Laus Veneris

Ford Madox Brown – Work (1852–65)

John William Waterhouse - The Lady of Shalott

Academic Art

Jean-Léon Gérôme – Pollice verso (1872);The Carpet Merchant (1887)

William-Adolphe Bouguereau – Pieta

Lawrence Alma-Tadema – The Finding of Moses (1904); A Reading from Homer

Gustave Doré – Divine Comedy engravings

19th Century American Artists & Hudson River School

Thomas Cole – The Oxbow (1836);The Course of Empire: The Consummation (1836)

Frederic Edwin Church – Landscapes

Albert Bierstadt – Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains (1868)

John Singer Sargent - Repose; Lilies

Ukrainian & Russian Realists (Peredvizhniki)

Ilya Repin – Barge Haulers on the Volga (1873);  Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks (1891)

Ivan Kramskoi – Christ in the Desert (1872)

Vasily Surikov – The Execution of the Streltsy

Arkhip Kuindzhi – The Rainbow; Landscape paintings

Isaak Levitan – Lake; Landscape paintings

Nesterov - the Soul of the People

Impressionists and Post-Impressionists

Claude Monet – Impression, Sunrise (1872); Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies; Rouen Cathedral: Façade (Sunlight) (1894)

Renoir – Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881); the Skiff; Ball at the Moulin de Gallette

Pissarro – The Boulevard Montmartre at Night (1897)

Cézanne – Landscapes

Van Gogh – The Starry Night; The Church at Auvers; Landscapes and still lifes

Whistler - Nocturnes; Mother

Seurat - A Sunday on La Grande Jatte

Caillebotte - Paris Street Rainy Day

20th Century American Painters

Glackens - Cape Cod Pier

Hopper - Nighthawks; Compartment C Car

Grant Wood - American Gothic; Paul Revere

Andrew Wyeth - Christina's World; Wind from the Sea