The Mouseion · The Hall · Room of Icons

Room of Icons

Twelve of the most famous pictures in the world, which in life hang in a dozen cities on three continents, here on four walls. The twelve change every three months. Look twice at the ones you know best: most are smaller, stranger or brighter than their postcards.

Walk inThe whole museum

On the walls this month

• 
  The Creation of Adam — Michelangelo, c. 1508–12
  Original: Sistine Chapel, Vatican City
• 
  Wheat Field with Cypresses — Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890), 1889, Oil on canvas
  Original: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
• 
  The Arnolfini Portrait — Jan van Eyck, 1434
  Original: The National Gallery, London
• 
  Sunflowers — Vincent van Gogh, 1888
  Original: The National Gallery, London
• 
  The Garden of Earthly Delights — Hieronymus Bosch, c. 1490–1510
  Original: Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
• 
  The Hunters in the Snow — Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1565
  Original: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• 
  The Milkmaid — Johannes Vermeer, c. 1660
  Original: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
• 
  Washington Crossing the Delaware — Emanuel Leutze (1816–1868), 1851, Oil on canvas
  Original: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
• 
  Impression, Sunrise — Claude Monet, 1872
  Original: Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
• 
  The Swing — Jean-Honoré Fragonard, c. 1767–68
  Original: The Wallace Collection, London
• 
  The Raft of the Medusa — Théodore Géricault, 1818–19
  Original: Musée du Louvre, Paris
• 
  The Third of May 1808 — Francisco Goya, 1814
  Original: Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid

More of The Hall

• The Season — The Mouseion’s exhibition hall. A new exhibition opens on the first of every month, drawn from museum collections…

Where the works come from

Every work in the Mouseion is a real piece, out of copyright everywhere, shown from the open collections of the museums that hold it — each label names the original’s museum and links to its page there.

• The Metropolitan Museum of Art — Open Access
• The Art Institute of Chicago — public-domain collection
• The Cleveland Museum of Art — Open Access
• Wikimedia Commons — public-domain photographs of works held elsewhere