408. Adolf the Superman Swallows Gold and Spouts Junk - John Heartfield - 1932 - Nat'l Gallery of Canada

409. Coronation of the Virgin - Jacobello del Fiore - early 1400s - Galleria dell'Accademia, Venice

410. The Angelic Announcement to the Shephards - Taddeo Gaddi - 1330s - Baroncelli Chapel, Santa Croce, Florence

411. Altarpiece of St. Francis of Assisi - Bonaventura Berlinghieri - 1235 - Church of San Francesco, Pescia

412. Portrait of the Art Dealer Johanna Ey - Otto Dix - 1924 - Private

413. Altarpiece of St. Louis of Toulouse - Simone Martini - 1319 - Gallerie Nazionali di Capodimonte, Naples

414. Baptism - Romare Bearden - 1975 - Private

415. La Montserrat - Julio González - 1935 - Stedelijk Museum

La Montserrat greeted visitors to the Spanish Republican Pavilion of 1937’s Exhibition Nationale, Paris. While on its face a modernist sculpture proclaiming worker-class and modernist values, it’s also a religious allusion. Montserrat is not only a common name for Christian women, it is a holy mountain site in Spain, famed for its church and black Madonna. There’s an obvious connection between Gonzalez’s subject and medium and the black Madonna image. It updates the religious icon and recreates it as a worshipful icon of secular republicanism.

416. The Able Doctor, or America Swallowing the Bitter Draught - Paul Revere - 1774

417. The Maestà - Duccio di Boninsegna - 1308-11 - Siena Cathedral

418. Kiss of Judas - Roman Master (unknown) - 13th-14th c. - Basilica di San Francesco, Assisi

419. Farm Family from Kahlenberg - Adolf Wissel - 1939

Adolf Wissel was an official painter of the Nazi party. Farm Family is supposed to be an ideal, but its figures all look so sad. Its like Regionalism purified--and probably took influence from modern art despite Nazi aesthetic enforcement--but equally sad. What a weird propaganda piece. It is more a summation of the Third Reich's havoc than its genocidal promise of prosperity.

420. Dancing Girls in Colorful Rays - Ernst Ludwig Kirchner - 1937 - Kirchner Museum

421. Descent from the Cross - Max Beckmann - 1917 - MOMA

422. Portrait of a Man, Said to be Christopher Columbus - Sebastiano del Piombo - 1519 - Met

423. Big Campbell's Soup Can Beef Noodle - Andy Warhol - 1962

424. Portrait of Henry Darnall III - Justus Engelhardt Kühn - 1710 - Maryland Historical Society

425. Girl Before a Mirror - Pablo Picasso - 1932 - MOMA

426. Self-Portraint - Ibrahim El-Salahi - 1963 - Tate

427. Double Portrait of the Artist's Daughters - Adolf von Hildebrand - 1889 - Getty

428. Two Hands - Claudette Schreuders - 2010 - Met

429. Oval Form with Strings and Color - Barbara Hepworth - 1966 - Met

430. Daboa - Malvina Cornell Hoffman - 1931 - Met

431. Sleeping Muse - Constantin Brâncuși - 1910 - Met

432. Portrait of George Washington (The Athenaeum Portrait) - Gilbert Stuart - 1796 - MFA

434. Richard Milhous Nixon - Norman Rockwell - 1968 - Nat'l Portrait Gallery

435. Le Baiser (The Kiss) - Constantin Brâncuși - 1909 - Cimetière de Montparnasse, Paris

436. Vietnam Veterans Memorial - Maya Lin - 1982 - Washington D.C.

437. The Virgin and Child with St. Anne - Workshop of Leonardo da Vinci - 1508-15 - Getty

438. Butcher's Stall with Flight into Egypt - Pieter Aertsen - 1551 - Museum Gustavianum

Seriously, Butcher's Stall is a little grotesque. And upon encountering it for the first time--context free--I maybe immediately related it to Hirst-while shock art. As in his cow heads in embalming fluid or whatever the heck he does. My bad. Once I got over the opulence of the butchery and charcuterie I flipped again upon realization that it was a delivery box for a Jesus story. A classic too. Its miniaturization is almost comical. I love it though. The Jesus story and the meat.

439. Utagawa Kuniyoshi - Pilgrims in the Waterfall - early to mid 1800s

440. Cloud Gate - Anish Kapoor - 2006 - Millennium Park, Chicago

The Bean, as Cloud Gate's known, is a terrific playground. One gets to stand around and look at himself in various reflections of funhouse quality. It's perfect. It's also an example of really functional, engaging, enviable public art. Sweet home, Chicago.

441. Angel of the North - Antony Gormley - 1998 - Gateshead, England

442. Warren Cup - 5-15 CE - British Museum

The Warren Cup was recently accused of being a 1900-made fake. I won't weigh in because I haven't read the argument. For a century it was considered real though, and fake or not various definitively Roman objects (vases, cups, etc.) share the Warren Cup's motifs.

443. Monolith, the Face of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, California Ansel Easton Adams - 1927 - Met

Adams is one of our most iconic photographers. If you didn't know, you've never been to Yosemite. They bomb you with his legacy upon visitation. It's for good reason though, because Yosemite's gorgeous, and I can't imagine a greater, grittier, deeper distillation of Yosemite. Same for Taos, or any other landscape Adams focused on.

444. Garçon à la pipe - Pablo Picasso - 1905 - Private

Like the rest of the free world I'm a Picasso fan. This, despite the fact that I'm hardly a fan of cubism. Pablo's so much more than cubism however, as Garçon à la pipe attests. Although initially a minor piece in Picasso's vast oeuvre, Garçon à la pipe sold at auction in 2004 for over $104 million, surprising many. Of the Picassos I'm dying to see but never will, Garçon à la pipe is top of the list. It's so charming, I want a reproduction in my pretend smoking parlor.

445. Tenant Farmer - Andrew Wyeth - 1961 - Delaware Art Museum

I grew up the Midwest, not the Northeast. I've never been to rural areas of New England either. Yet I know this scene. That deer is awaiting a dressing and bleeding out. My uncle just shot it, from the deer blind two acres off. That's my grandparents' house. Grandpa, by noon already half in the bag, is done hunting for the day. Grandma's inside, puffy white hair, t-shirt, long skirt, busied by women's work.

446. A Lawn Being Sprinkled - David Hockney - 1967 - LA Louver

I also like the cover of Joni Mitchell's The Hissing of Summer Lawns. It's tactile and weird. A Lawn Being Sprinkled, not much older than Mitchell's album, is even glossier and moderner. Its sprinkler forms reflect the stately shape guise of Mitchell's characters' lives. The form, water and California glow is gorgeous. But if those sprinklers were turned off, that grass would die. The house would lose charm. Hockney's art so often suggests the emotional decay Mitchell's lyrics elucidate.

447. Un Bar en el Folies-Bergère - Édouard Manet - 1882 - Courtauld

Every tired bartender ever.

448. Second Army Attacks Port Arthur - Kobayashi Kiyochika - 1894 - MFA

A beautiful, propagandistic late (Meiji) ukiyo-e (woodblock print) celebrating a major Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese war. Its immediacy reflects its impeccable craft.

449. A Festive Dance (Indians Dancing) - John White - 1585 - British Museum

450. Bad Boy - Eric Fischl - 1981 - Saatchi Gallery

451. Sleep - Kehinde Wiley - 2008 - RFC

I'm in love with Kehinde Wiley. His huge painting at DIA is one of my favorites (but I haven't yet found a decent, large image). In Sleep, clothes are missing, bringing the sexuality so often suggested in Wiley's paintings forefront. It's still undeniably Wiley. His motifs and aesthetic are unmistakably his, making him an essential artist.

452. Dapple Gray - Deborah Butterfield - 1980 - MMoCA

453. Too Young to Die - Yoshitomo Nara - 2001 - RFC

454. Canyon - Robert Rauschenberg - 1959 - MOMA

455. Forever Free - Edmonia Lewis - 1867 - Howard University