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The Birth of Venus (Botticelli) by Sandro Botticelli –

20 Famous Paintings of Women

In the history of art, women have always been the centerpiece, from feminine sculptures to beautiful female portraits and famous paintings of renowned women. The inspiration for the artists that created these masterpieces goes without saying as the innate beauty of women. Going as far back as over 20, 000 years ago, we see the adoration of the female figure, possibly as a model of fertility. We have created a list of the most famous paintings of women in art history that are immensely valuable even to this day and age.

Many artists like Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Titian, and Leonardo da Vinci made many famous paintings depicting Women in Art. This was also largely attributed to the rise of the feminist movement in the 20th Century which saw the inclusion of women in multiple spaces including art. In this article, we highlight 20 of the most famous paintings of women.

1. The Birth of Venus 

The Birth of Venus is a painting by the Italian artist Sandro Botticelli, probably executed in the mid-1480s. It depicts the goddess Venus arriving at the shore after her birth when she had emerged from the sea fully grown. The painting is in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy.

The Birth of Venus is among the most famous paintings in the world, and an icon of the Italian Renaissance. As a depiction of subjects from classical mythology on a very large scale the painting was virtually unprecedented in Western art since classical antiquity, as was the size and prominence of a nude female figure in the Birth. Its main meaning is a straightforward, if individual, treatment of a traditional scene from Greek mythology, and its appeal is sensory and very accessible, hence its enormous popularity. Read more facts about the Birth of Venus from Botticelli. 

2. Whistler’s Mother

Whistlers Mother by James McNeill Whistler –

Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, best known under its colloquial name Whistler’s Mother or Portrait of Artist’s Mother, is a painting in oils on canvas created by the American-born painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler in 1871. The subject of the painting is Whistler’s mother, Anna McNeill Whistler.

The painting is displayed in a frame of Whistler’s own design. It is held by the Musée d’Orsay in Â鶹APP, having been bought by the French state in 1891. It is one of the most famous works by an American artist outside the United States. It has been variously described as an American icon and a Victorian Mona Lisa.

3. Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting

Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting, also known as Autoritratto in veste di Pittura or simply La Pittura, was painted by the Italian Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi. The oil-on-canvas painting was produced during Gentileschi’s stay in England between 1638 and 1639. It was in the collection of Charles I and was returned to the Royal Collection at the Restoration in 1660 and remains there.

The scene depicts Gentileschi painting herself, who is in turn represented as the Allegory of Painting illustrated by Cesare Ripa. It is now in the British Royal Collection. The painting demonstrates rare feminist themes from a time when women seldom held jobs, let alone were well-known for them. Gentileschi’s portrayal of herself as the epitome of the arts was a bold statement to make for the period.

4. Girl with a Pearl Earring

The Girl With The Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer –

Girl with a Pearl Earring is an oil painting by Dutch Golden Age painter Johannes Vermeer, dated 1665. Going by various names over the centuries, it became known by its present title towards the end of the 20th century after the earring worn by the girl portrayed there. The work has been in the collection of the Mauritshuis in The Hague since 1902 and has been the subject of various literary and cinematic treatments.

The painting depicts a European girl wearing an exotic dress, an oriental turban, and what appears to be a very large pearl as an earring. After the most recent restoration of the painting in 1994, the subtle colour scheme and the intimacy of the girl’s gaze toward the viewer have been greatly enhanced. Girl with a Pearl Earring has become one of the world’s most recognizable paintings and has been compared to the Mona Lisa. In 2006, the Dutch public selected it as the most beautiful painting in the Netherlands.

5. Olympia

Olympia is a painting by Édouard Manet, first exhibited at the 1865 Â鶹APP Salon, which shows a nude woman “Olympia” lying on a bed being brought flowers by a servant. Olympia was modelled by Victorine Meurent and Olympia’s servant was by the art model Laure. 

Olympia’s confrontational gaze caused shock and astonishment when the painting was first exhibited because a number of details in the picture identified her as a prostitute. The French government acquired the painting in 1890 after a public subscription organized by Claude Monet. The painting is on display at the Musée d’Orsay, Â鶹APP.

6. Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa, by Leonardo da Vinci –

Mona Lisa is possibly the most famous female painting of all time, known to even those who are unfamiliar with art. The Mona Lisa is a half-length portrait painting by Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. The painting has been definitively identified to depict the Italian noblewoman Lisa del Giocondo. 

Considered an archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, it has been described as the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, and the most parodied work of art in the world. The painting’s novel qualities include the subject’s enigmatic expression, the monumentality of the composition, the subtle modelling of forms, and atmospheric illusionism.

The painting’s global fame and popularity stem from its 1911 theft by Vincenzo Peruggia, who attributed his actions to Italian patriotism a belief it should belong to Italy. The theft and subsequent recovery in 1914 generated unprecedented publicity for art theft and led to the publication of many cultural depictions. The Mona Lisa is one of the most valuable paintings in the world. It holds the Guinness World Record for the highest-known painting insurance valuation in history at US$100 million in 1962. Read more on the Juciest Stories of when the Mona Lisa was Vandalized or Stolen. 

7. Woman With a Parasol

Woman With a Parasol sometimes known as The Stroll is an oil-on-canvas painting by Claude Monet from 1875. The Impressionist work depicts his wife Camille Monet and their son Jean Monet in the period from 1871 to 1877 while they were living in Argenteuil, capturing a moment on a stroll on a windy summer’s day.

The work is a genre painting of an everyday family scene, not a formal portrait. The painting is one of Monet’s most recognizable and revered works and of impressionism as a whole. Monet sold the painting but one of the owners in the long run donated the painting to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, in 1983.

8. Venus of Urbino

Venus de Urbino by Titian –

The Venus of Urbino is an oil painting by the Italian painter Titian, which seems to have been begun in 1532 or 1534, and was perhaps completed in 1534, but not sold until 1538. It depicts a nude young woman, traditionally identified with the goddess Venus, reclining on a couch or bed in the sumptuous surroundings of a Renaissance palace. It is now in the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence.

The Venus stares straight at the viewer, unconcerned with her nudity. In her right hand, she holds a posy of roses whilst she holds her other hand over her genitals. In the near background is a dog, often a symbol of fidelity. In a different space in the background, two maids are shown rummaging through a cassone chest, where clothes were kept. Interpretations of the painting fall into two groups; both agree that the painting has a powerful erotic charge, but beyond that, it is seen either as a portrait celebrating the marriage of its first owner.

9. Judith Slaying Holofernes

Judith Slaying Holofernes is a painting by the Italian early Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi, completed in 1612-13 and now at the Museo Capodimonte, Naples, Italy. The picture is considered one of her iconic works. The canvas shows Judith beheading Holofernes. The subject takes an episode from the apocryphal Book of Judith in the Old Testament, which recounts the assassination of the Assyrian general Holofernes by the Israelite heroine Judith. 

The painting shows the moment when Judith, helped by her maidservant Abra, beheads the general after he has fallen asleep in a drunken stupor. Early feminist critics interpreted the painting as a form of visual revenge following Gentileschi’s rape by Agostino Tassi in 1611, similarly, many other art historians see the painting in the context of her achievement in portraying strong women.

10. La Grande Odalisque

La Grande Odalisque by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres –

La Grande Odalisque is an oil painting of 1814 by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres depicting an odalisque, or concubine. Ingres’ contemporaries considered the work to signify Ingres’ break from Neoclassicism, indicating a shift toward exotic Romanticism.

Grande Odalisque attracted wide criticism when it was first shown. It is renowned for its elongated proportions and lack of anatomical realism. The work is owned by the Louvre Museum, Â鶹APP which purchased the work in 1899. Read more on the best way to visit the Louvre Museum. 

11. Liberty Leading the People

Liberty Leading the People is a painting by Eugène Delacroix commemorating the July Revolution of 1830, which toppled King Charles X. A woman of the people with a Phrygian cap personifying the concept of Liberty leads a varied group of people forward over a barricade and the bodies of the fallen, holding the flag of the French Revolution, the tricolour, which again became France’s national flag after these events, in one hand and brandishing a bayonetted musket with the other. 

The figure of Liberty is also viewed as a symbol of France and the French Republic known as Marianne. The painting is sometimes wrongly thought to depict the French Revolution of 1789. Liberty Leading the People is exhibited in the Louvre in Â鶹APP.

12. Portrait of Gertrude Stein

Portrait of Gertrude Stein 1907 by Félix Vallotton –

Portrait of Gertrude Stein is an oil on canvas painting of the American writer and art collector Gertrude Stein by Pablo Picasso, which was begun in 1905 and finished the following year. The painting is housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. 

It is considered one of the important works of Picasso’s Rose Period. The portrait has historical significance, due to the subject’s role in Picasso’s early life as a struggling artist and eventual commercial success. It also represents a significant transitional step in the artist’s move towards Cubism.

13. The Cradle

The Cradle is an oil on canvas painting by the French Impressionist painter Berthe Morisot, executed in 1872. It is on display at the Musée d’Orsay in Â鶹APP. Morisot represented in this painting her sister Edma Portillon watching over the sleep of her daughter Blanche. 

The painting was exhibited for the first time in the first impressionist exhibition, opened on April 15, 1874, in the former studio of the photographer Nadar, on the Â鶹APPian Boulevard des Capucines. The work remained subsequently in the family collection, passing into the hands of Blanche Portillon, the painter’s niece and model of the sleeping baby. In 1930 it was acquired by the Louvre Museum.

14. Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird

Frida Kahlo, Self portrait with necklace of thorns, 1940, Mudec Milano, 3 maggio 2018 by Ambra75 –

Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird is a 1940 self-portrait by Mexican painter Frida Kahlo which also includes a black cat, a monkey, and two dragonflies. It was painted after Kahlo’s divorce from Diego Rivera and the end of her affair with photographer Nickolas Muray. Scholars have interpreted her self-portraits as a way for Kahlo to reclaim her body from medical issues and gender conformity. 

 In particular, scholars have interpreted her self-portraits in the context of the tradition of male European artists using the female body as the subject of their paintings and an object of desire. Kahlo, using her own image, reclaims this use from the patriarchal tradition. Muray bought the portrait shortly after it was painted, and it is currently part of the Nickolas Muray collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Read more on the 15 Famous Mexican Paintings. 

15. The Nude Maja

The Nude Maja is an oil on canvas painting made around 1797–1800 by the Spanish artist Francisco de Goya and is now in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. It portrays a nude woman reclining on a bed of pillows and was probably commissioned by Manuel de Godoy, to hang in his private collection in a separate cabinet reserved for nude paintings. The subject is identified as a maja or fashionable lower-class Madrid woman.

The painting is renowned for the straightforward and unashamed gaze of the model towards the viewer. It has also been cited as among the earliest Western artwork to depict a nude woman’s pubic hair without obvious negative connotations. With this work, Goya not only upset the ecclesiastical authorities but also titillated the public and extended the artistic horizon of the day. It has been in the Museo del Prado in Madrid since 1901.

16. Portrait of Madame X

Madame X by John Singer Sargent –

Portrait of Madame X is a portrait painting by John Singer Sargent of a young socialite, Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, wife of the French banker Pierre Gautreau. Madame X was painted not as a commission, but at the request of Sargent. It is a study in opposition. 

Sargent shows a woman posing in a black satin dress with jeweled straps, a dress that reveals and hides at the same time. The portrait is characterized by the pale flesh tone of the subject contrasted against a dark-coloured dress and background.

17. Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I also called The Lady in Gold or The Woman in Gold is a painting by Gustav Klimt, completed between 1903 and 1907. The painting was stolen by the Nazis in 1941 and displayed at the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere in Vienna. The portrait is the final and most fully representative work of Klimt’s golden phase.

In mid-1903 Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer commissioned Klimt to paint a portrait of his wife; he wished to give the piece to Adele’s parents as an anniversary present that October. Klimt drew over a hundred preparatory sketches for the portrait between 1903 and 1904. The Bloch-Bauers purchased some of the sketches he had made of Adele when they obtained 16 Klimt drawings.

18. The Sistine Madonna

Madonna and Child by Raphael –

The Sistine Madonna, also called the Madonna di San Sisto, is an oil painting by the Italian artist Raphael. The painting was commissioned in 1512 by Pope Julius II for the church of San Sisto, Piacenza, and was probably executed in 1513–1514. The canvas was one of the last Madonnas painted by Raphael. Giorgio Vasari called it a truly rare and extraordinary work.

The painting was moved to Dresden in 1754 and is well known for its influence on the German and Russian art scenes. After World War II, it was relocated to Moscow for a decade before being returned to Germany.

19. Portrait of Dora Maar

Portrait of Dora Maar is a 1937 oil on canvas painting by Pablo Picasso. It depicts Dora Maar, whose original name was Henriette Theodora Markovitch, the painter’s lover, seated on a chair. It is part of the collection of the Musée Picasso, in Â鶹APP, where it is considered to be one of Picasso’s masterpieces.

Portrait of Dora Maar clearly shows the importance of the subject in Picasso’s life. In this portrait, Maar’s face is particularly remarkable for its experimental style, as the image depicts both the profile of the face and the frontal face in conjunction, which provides an opportunity to convey several perspectives. Maar is looking directly towards the artist, which is impossible but made possible by the artist’s rendering of the subject. The other eye is looking inwards, towards herself. Picasso is therefore able to show two aspects of the face simultaneously, which convey two sides of the self.

20. Virgin of the Rocks

The Virgin of the Rocks is the name of two paintings by the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, on the same subject, with a composition which is identical except for several significant details. Two further paintings are associated with the commission: side panels each containing an angel playing a musical instrument and completed by associates of Leonardo. These are both in the National Gallery, London.

Both paintings show the Mary and child Jesus with the infant John the Baptist and an angel Uriel, in a rocky setting which gives the paintings their usual name. The significant compositional differences are in the gaze and right hand of the angel.

Also read on the 15 Most expensive paintings of all time.