Famous Portrait Paintings: 10 Faces That Changed Art History

Famous portrait paintings share one secret: none of them are only about likeness. A commission that started as a record of someone’s face became, in the right hands, a study of character, status, mortality, and the strange act of looking itself. The ten below are the portraits the whole world knows, from a Florentine merchant’s wife to an Iowa farmer and his daughter. The best known are Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait, Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X, Gainsborough’s The Blue Boy, Gilbert Stuart’s George Washington, Whistler’s Mother, Sargent’s Madame X, Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, and Grant Wood’s American Gothic.

Here is what each one is, where it lives, and what it changed.

Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa (around 1503 to 1519)

Mona Lisa is the most famous painting on earth, and it is a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo, the wife of a Florentine silk merchant. Leonardo built her face from countless thin, smoky layers, a technique called sfumato, so the edges of her mouth and eyes dissolve and her expression seems to shift as you watch. A 1911 theft from the Louvre turned an already admired picture into a global icon. It still hangs at the Louvre in Paris.

Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait (1434)

The Arnolfini Portrait shows a merchant and a woman standing in a richly furnished room, and it is one of the most inventive paintings of the early Northern Renaissance. Van Eyck rendered every surface, fur, brass, and glass, with a precision that oil paint had never reached before, and he signed the back wall above a convex mirror that reflects the whole scene, including two figures in the doorway. It hangs at the National Gallery in London.

Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring (around 1665)

Girl with a Pearl Earring is not a commissioned portrait but a tronie, a study of an anonymous figure in exotic dress, which is part of why she feels so timeless. Vermeer set a girl turning toward us against a black ground, caught the wet light on her lips and the single luminous pearl, and left her identity a mystery forever. It is held at the Mauritshuis in The Hague.

Diego Velazquez, Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1650)

Portrait of Pope Innocent X is often called one of the greatest portraits ever painted. Velazquez rendered the pope’s shrewd, wary face and the shimmering reds of his robes with such truth that the pope himself reportedly said it was “too true.” The painting’s psychological force has haunted later artists, most famously Francis Bacon, who reworked it obsessively. It hangs at the Galleria Doria Pamphilj in Rome.

Thomas Gainsborough, The Blue Boy (around 1770)

The Blue Boy is a full-length portrait of a young man in a shimmering blue satin costume, and it became one of the most beloved British paintings ever made. Gainsborough painted the blue clothing with dazzling, feathery brushwork, partly as a demonstration that cool colors could carry a picture, a friendly challenge to the color theory of his day. It is held at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.

Gilbert Stuart, George Washington (1796)

The Athenaeum Portrait of George Washington is the face on the United States one dollar bill, which makes it one of the most reproduced portraits in history. Stuart never finished it, leaving the background bare, yet that unfinished head became the standard image of the first American president. It is jointly owned by the National Portrait Gallery and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

James McNeill Whistler, Whistler’s Mother (1871)

Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, better known as Whistler’s Mother, shows the artist’s mother seated in profile against a plain wall. Whistler cared less about her likeness than about the balance of shapes and muted color, which is why he titled it as an arrangement. The severe, tender image became an unexpected icon of motherhood. It hangs at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris.

John Singer Sargent, Madame X (1884)

Madame X is a portrait of the Parisian socialite Virginie Gautreau, painted in a black gown against a dark ground with her pale skin turned in haughty profile. It caused a scandal at its debut, and Sargent repainted a fallen strap to calm the outrage, then kept the picture for decades as his finest work. It is held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907)

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, sometimes called the Woman in Gold, sets a Viennese society woman inside a shimmering field of real gold and silver leaf. Klimt fused portraiture with pure ornament so the sitter almost melts into pattern. Looted by the Nazis and returned to Adele’s family after a long legal fight, it now hangs at the Neue Galerie in New York.

Grant Wood, American Gothic (1930)

American Gothic is a double portrait of a stern man holding a pitchfork beside a woman, standing in front of a white farmhouse with a pointed Gothic window. Wood posed his own dentist and his sister as the pair and painted rural American character with a mix of respect and dry humor that people still argue about. It has become one of the most parodied images in the world. It is held at the Art Institute of Chicago.

What great portraits can teach you

The thread through all ten is that a portrait is a decision about what matters. Leonardo chose ambiguity, Velazquez chose psychology, Whistler chose pure design, Klimt chose ornament. Each artist looked at a single face and decided what the painting was really about, then let everything else serve that choice.

That is the lesson if you want to paint people. A likeness is only the starting point. Decide what you see in your subject and build the whole picture around it. If this pulls you in, our roundup of famous self portraits shows how artists turned that same seeing on themselves, and the practical guide to how to draw a self portrait walks you through your first attempt. You can see these faces beside the broader most famous paintings of all time, and browse the full art history and famous paintings collection to keep exploring.

Frequently asked questions

What is the most famous portrait painting?

Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is the most famous portrait painting in the world, held at the Louvre in Paris. Its fame comes from Leonardo's soft modeling, the sitter's ambiguous expression, and a long history of admiration, theft, and reproduction that made the face universally known.

What is the difference between a portrait and a self portrait?

A portrait depicts another person, often commissioned to record their likeness or status, while a self portrait is the artist painting their own face. Many of the most studied portraits in art are commissions, while self portraits let artists experiment freely on a model who never gets tired.

Why were so many famous portraits commissioned?

For centuries a painted portrait was the only way to record a face, so rulers, merchants, and families paid artists to preserve their likeness and signal their wealth and standing. That patronage funded some of the greatest painting ever made, from van Eyck to Sargent.

Are portraits good subjects for beginners?

Yes, though they are demanding. Painting a face teaches you proportion, value, and edges faster than almost any other subject because the eye instantly spots what is wrong in a portrait. Starting with a still subject and steady light makes the challenge manageable.