Baroque art doesn’t sit quietly on a wall. It surges, crashes, pleads, dazzles. It was built for impact, meant to shake you, impress you, convert you.
This list gathers 15 of the most unforgettable artworks from the Baroque era. Each one is a masterclass in theatricality, tension, and visual storytelling.
Expect divine apparitions, martyrdoms mid-scream, saints in ecstasy, and painters grappling with mortality. These are the works that shaped the Baroque, and still hold power centuries later.
Most Famous Baroque Artworks
1. The Calling of Saint Matthew – Caravaggio
📍Contarelli Chapel, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome
Caravaggio—born Michelangelo Merisi—was the original Baroque rebel. His radical use of light and shadow (chiaroscuro) brought raw intensity and startling realism to religious art. He’s one of my personal favorites, and The Calling of Saint Matthew shows exactly why.
Drop a euro in the light box and turn to the left wall: the painting hits you like a spotlight in a dark theater. This is where the story starts. And it’s one of his most iconic, most electrified works.
The scene captures the moment Christ calls Matthew, a tax collector, to join him. But this isn’t some gauzy vision of holiness. We’re in a dingy backroom, all shadow and suspicion.
Christ stands at the far right, nearly in the dark, his arm outstretched. His hand echoes the gesture from Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel. But here it’s cloaked in ambiguity.
Matthew, bearded and seated with a group, seems stunned. He points to himself in disbelief. Or is he deflecting? The tension is immediate, theatrical, human.
This is Caravaggio’s tenebrism at full throttle. A blast of divine light cuts through the gloom, casting the whole moment in stark relief.
>>> Click here to book a Caravaggio tour of Rome
2. Las Meninas – Diego Velázquez
📍Museo del Prado, Madrid
Las Meninas is one of the most enigmatic works in Western art. It’s often called the Prado’s Mona Lisa for its mystery and prestige. Painted in 1656 by Velázquez, court painter to Philip IV of Spain, it’s a dizzying blend of portraiture, illusion, and staged spontaneity.
At first glance, it’s a snapshot of court life. The young Infanta Margarita is surrounded by her maids of honor, a dwarf, a nun, and Velázquez himself, brush in hand. But nothing is quite what it seems.
The king and queen appear only as a reflection in a mirror at the back. This raises the question: who is really the subject here?
The composition defies convention. With its layered gazes and theatrical lighting, Las Meninas blurs the line between observer and observed.
Is it a royal portrait? A self-portrait? A trick of the eye? Art historians still argue over its meaning.
>>> Click here to book a Prado ticket
3. Judith Slaying Holofernes – Artemisia Gentileschi
📍Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Judith Beheading Holofernes is the most iconic work of Baroque master Artemisia Gentileschi. The Old Testament tale—Judith decapitating the Assyrian general besieging her city—was a popular subject. But Artemisia takes it further than anyone.
Judith isn’t portrayed as dainty or hesitant here. She’s fierce, focused, sleeves rolled up, mid-swing with a massive sword. Blood gushes across white sheets as her handmaiden pins Holofernes down.
Many read the painting as a form of personal vengeance. Artemisia gave Judith her own face, and Holofernes bears the features of Agostino Tassi, the man who assaulted her. Even the bracelet Judith wears may show the goddess Artemis, a quiet signature of female retribution.
Unlike earlier versions on the theme, including her own in the Capodimonte Museum of Naples, this composition puts all the weight on Judith: her body, her resolve, her rage. Holofernes is already fading, his limbs truncated, the power visibly drained from him.
It’s not just a beheading. It’s a veritable reckoning.
>>> Click here to book a timed entry Uffizi ticket
4. The Night Watch – Rembrandt van Rijn
📍Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
The Night Watch is Rembrandt’s most famous—and largest—painting. It’s housed in its own dedicated space at the Rijksmuseum. Painted in 1642, it’s a landmark of the Dutch Golden Age and a radical reimagining of the group portrait.
It’s a Baroque riot in oil, and it’s Rembrandt swinging for the fences. Historical weight, ambition, and chaos? It earns its place on this list.
Civic guard portraits were a dime a dozen in 17th century Holland: stiff, seated, interchangeable. But Rembrandt shattered that mold.
He gives us motion, drama, light slicing through shadow. The captain steps forward, his lieutenant gestures, muskets rise. This isn’t a posed scene. It’s a moment unfolding before you.
Instead of hierarchy and symmetry, The Night Watch delivers chaos and personality. Every face, every gesture tells a different story. It’s a pageant of civic pride, ambition, and disorder.
>>> Click here to book a Rijksmuseum ticket
5. Return of the Prodigal Son – Peter Paul Rubens
📍Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
This was Rembrandt’s final masterpiece. It’s Rembrandt stripped to his essence: no theatrics, no grandeur—just quiet, devastating grace. The Return of the Prodigal Son was one of his final works, and it reads like a spiritual confession.
The scene shows the moment of forgiveness from the Gospel of Luke. The kneeling son is threadbare and broken. The father’s hands rest gently on his back, radiating acceptance.
There’s no dramatic gesture. Just warmth, humility, and stillness. The figures around them fade into shadow, drawing your eye to the emotional core.
The paint is thick, the brushwork loose. It’s not about surface beauty, but rather about interior truth.
Rembrandt was near the end of his life, having suffered loss after loss. As a result, he paints mercy as something tactile, rendered in flesh and light.
6. David with the Head of Goliath – Caravaggio
📍Galleria Borghese, Rome
David with the Head of Goliath is one of Caravaggio’s most haunting and psychologically charged works. It’s a painting steeped in remorse and inner conflict, rendered with his signature realism and masterful use of chiaroscuro.
David stands quietly, holding the severed head of Goliath. But he’s not a triumphant biblical hero gloating over victory. His expression is somber, almost sorrowful.
The real twist? Goliath bears the face of Caravaggio himself. It’s a self-portrait as the slain villain. Art historians have sometimes interpreted David as a stand-in for the artist’s younger, purer self.
The painting has been read as a form of self-oblation—a symbolic offering of guilt or a plea for mercy. Some believe it’s tied directly to Caravaggio’s own fugitive status after the murder of Ranuccio Tomassoni. This heinous act that left him exiled and desperate for papal pardon.
The chiaroscuro only heightens the emotional intensity. David’s face and arms glow against the void, while the rest recedes into shadow. it’s as if the painting itself can’t bear to show everything at once.
It’s less a biblical episode than a personal reckoning, painted in blood and light.
>>> Click here to book a timed entry Borghese ticket
7. Portrait of Pope Innocent X – Diego Velázquez
📍Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome
The crown jewel of the Doria Pamphilj Gallery is Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X. It’s a painting so powerful it has its own room, and rightly so.
Painted at the peak of Velázquez’s career, it’s celebrated for its brutal honesty and psychological depth. The pope stares out from his crimson throne with clenched lips and piercing eyes. He’s equal parts authority, calculation, and weariness.
This wasn’t the flattering, idealized portrait Innocent expected. Legend has it, upon first seeing it, he muttered: “È troppo vero”—“It’s too true.”
Far from a heraldic image, the portrait strips away pomp and exposes the man beneath the robes. You see the weight of power and the paranoia that comes with it. It’s both majestic and a tad unnerving.
Jonathan Doria Pamphilj called it “a turning point in the history of Western art,” and it’s not hard to see why. Velázquez rendered not just a pope, but a person who was flawed, aging, and absolutely real.
Decades later, Francis Bacon turned this image into his infamous Screaming Popes series. He twisted Velázquez’s realism into something grotesque, existential, and deliberately blasphemous.
>>> Click here to book a Doria Pamphilj ticket
8. The Judgment of Paris – Peter Paul Rubens
📍National Gallery, London
Rubens’ Judgment of Paris is a full-blown Baroque feast. For the eyes, for the ego, and for the myth. The painting depicts the fateful beauty contest from Greek mythology.
Paris, a Trojan prince, is asked to choose the fairest goddess among Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. His decision, swayed by the promise of Helen of Troy, will ultimately spark the Trojan War.
Rubens seizes the moment not for its politics, but for its sensual possibilities. The three goddesses are posed nude in lush, theatrical light.
They’re painted in his signature voluptuous style, all radiant flesh and soft curves. They’re not abstract ideals of beauty; they’re earthy, physical, and distinctly human.
Paris, seated with his shepherd’s crook, looks on as Mercury and Cupid set the scene. The atmosphere is both idyllic and tense.
Everyone is on the verge of action, flattery, or betrayal. The landscape behind them glows with twilight, adding a layer of dreamlike inevitability to the unfolding drama.
As with much of Rubens’ mythological work, the painting is less about narrative clarity and more about visual pleasure and painterly bravado. It’s art as temptation, and Rubens makes no apology for it.
>>> Click here to book a National Gallery tour
9. 📍Cerasi Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome
Caravaggio – The Crucifixion of Saint Peter & The Conversion of Saint Paul
Caravaggio’s twin masterpieces in the Cerasi Chapel are studies in grit, gravity, and divine intervention. They were painted under pressure, and against resistance.
Monsignor Tiberio Cerasi initially rejected Caravaggio’s first versions. Undeterred, the artist sold them to collectors and returned with these final, more severe renditions.
In The Crucifixion of Saint Peter, the saint isn’t shown as a martyr bathed in glory. Rather, he’s depicted as an old man struggling under the weight of death.
His face contorts, his body sags, and one executioner’s feet are filthy. Caravaggio strips the scene of holiness and replaces it with raw human effort. It’s biblical narrative told in street-level realism.
Facing it across the chapel is The Conversion of Saint Paul, where Saul lies splayed on the ground beneath the bulk of a horse. A golden beam from above isolates him in a moment of spiritual shock.
The composition is daring. Paul is minimized, the horse dominates, and its rear end even faces a fresco by Annibale Carracci—Caravaggio’s rival.
A church official famously questioned the scene: “Why is the horse in the center?” Caravaggio replied, “Is the horse God? No, but he stands in God’s light.”
Together, these paintings upend tradition. They flatten saints into men, magnify the mundane, and leave their viewers not with comfort, but confrontation.
10. The Immaculate Conception of Los Venerables – Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
📍Museo del Prado, Madrid
Murillo was a major voice of the Spanish Baroque, known for blending the mystical and the tender in his religious works. One of his greatest achievements, The Immaculate Conception of Los Venerables, now hangs in Madrid’s Prado Museum.
The painting shows the Virgin Mary suspended in a celestial glow, gazing heavenward, her hands folded in grace. She stands atop a crescent moon, encircled by cherubs and clouds, rendered in delicate, pearly tones. The softness of her expression and the ethereal palette give the painting an almost weightless quality.
Murillo’s handling of light is masterful. It’s subtle, diffused, and emotionally charged.
His Mary is pure serenity, elevated yet entirely human. It’s a work that captures the Counter-Reformation ideal: spiritual awe conveyed through beauty and intimacy.
The painting’s history is nearly as dramatic as its subject. Looted by Napoleon, it ended up in the Louvre before the Prado managed to reclaim it in 1941. Despite enduring multiple restorations, its quiet power remains intact.
11. The Stealing of the Body of Saint Mark – Tintoretto
📍Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice
Tintoretto is an edge pick in terms of Barqoue art. He’s formally classified as a Venetian Mannerist. But his work has all the over-the-top hallmarks of the Baroque.
Take this painting. It’s unhinged in the best possible way. It’s flooded with supernatural light and chaos. The subject is a “robbery.”
In 829, two Venetian merchants “rescued” St. Mark’s body from Alexandria Egypt and smuggled it back to Venice. They concealed his corpse beneath piles of pork products in a gondola, so that muslim officials would steer clear.
The painting is packed with spectral figures and spatial weirdness. It’s 100% emotionally charged, theatrical, and otherworldly. In essence, it’s the Venetian ghost opera version of Baroque.
>>> Click here to book an Accademia ticket
12. The Triumph of Divine Providence – Pietro da Cortona
📍Palazzo Barberini, Rome
Room 30, the grand salon of Palazzo Barberini, delivers one of the most jaw dropping ceilings in Rome. Commissioned by Francesco Barberini, nephew of Pope Urban VIII, Pietro da Cortona’s fresco The Triumph of Divine Providence is Baroque excess at its finest.
The ceiling bursts open in a riot of clouds, figures, and allegory. Meant to glorify the Barberini family, it shows Divine Providence presiding over the heavens as Rome crowns the family’s coat of arms.
Below, the goddess of wisdom hurls out chaos, while Barberini bees swirl upward in divine approval.
Painted in quadratura style to create the illusion of a ceiling opening to the sky, the fresco is a full throttle display of Baroque theater. It’s myth, propaganda, and celestial pageantry. It was designed to dazzle, and still does.
Some viewers find it overwhelming. It’s awfully crowded, overly grand, and perhaps too self-important. But that’s the Baroque: power on parade, dressed in clouds and divine light.
>> Click here to book a Palazzo Barberini ticket
13. Girl with a Pearl Earring – Johannes Vermeer
📍Mauritshuis, The Hague
Vermeer isn’t typical Baroque. There’s no sweeping drama, no theatrical light, no grand religious narrative. But he still belongs to the period.
His mastery of light, intimate realism, and focus on capturing a moment in time align with Baroque ideals. He just scaled down his paintings to the quiet corners of domestic life. Where other Baroque artists shout, Vermeer whispers. But with equal precision.
His radiant Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665) is now one of the most beloved portraits in Western art. A young woman in a blue and gold turban turns to glance over her shoulder, lips slightly parted, as if about to speak.
Her expression is open, yet unreadable. The background is dark and plain, her features luminous by contrast.
Often called the “Mona Lisa of the North,” the painting shares that same enigmatic quality with its Louvre counterpart. It’s a bust length portrait against an undefined backdrop, more mood than message.
Despite its 17th century origins, Girl with a Pearl Earring didn’t gain worldwide fame until Tracy Chevalier’s 1999 novel and the 2003 film adaptation starring Scarlett Johansson brought it to popular attention. Since then, its quiet mystery has only grown more magnetic.
>>> Click here to book a Mauritshius ticket
14. The Rokeby Venus – Diego Velázquez
📍National Gallery, London
Velázquez was the undisputed master of 17th century Spanish painting, and The Rokeby Venus is his boldest surviving work. Also known as The Toilet of Venus, it’s the artist’s only known nude and a rare example of sensuality in Spanish Baroque art.
Painted during the era of the Spanish Inquisition, it was a radical act. Nudes were taboo, and Velázquez likely only got away with it thanks to his status as court painter. The identity of the model and the patron remain a mystery.
Venus lies on a bed, her back turned to the viewer. Her gaze is caught in a mirror held by Cupid. She’s no plump, classical goddess. Her body is lithe, her hairstyle fairly contemporary.
Her pale skin contrasts with the white sheets, drawing attention to her curves. Her face, reflected in the mirror, appears slightly older than her body. A quiet nod to beauty’s fleeting nature.
The mirror adds a layer of flirtation. Is she looking at us or herself? This optical trick, known as the “Venus effect,” makes the viewer complicit in the act of looking.
In 1914, the painting was famously slashed by suffragette Mary Richardson, who attacked it with a meat cleaver. It was later painstakingly restored. But the tension between beauty, power, and the gaze remains as sharp as ever.
15. Bernini’s Baroque Masterworks
— The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa 📍Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome
— Apollo and Daphne 📍Galleria Borghese, Rome
— David 📍Galleria Borghese, Rome
No list of Baroque masterpieces can leave off the incredible sculptures of Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
In the venerable Borghese Gallery, three of Bernini’s sculptures stand out for their intricate detail and dramatic narratives.
Apollo and Daphne captures the climax of the mythological chase. Daphne is in mid-transformation into a laurel tree to escape Apollo’s pursuit. The sculpture’s fluidity and delicate rendering of bark and leaves emerging from Daphne’s form show Bernini’s unparalleled skill.
The Rape of Proserpina is a brutal tour de force. Pluto lunges forward, gripping Proserpina’s twisting body as she writhes and screams. His fingers sink into her marble flesh with such realism it almost feels obscene.
There’s no softening here. Just raw abduction, struggle, and the sheer physicality of myth made tactile. It’s violent, theatrical, and technically jaw-dropping.
Meanwhile, David is also depicted in the midst of action. He’s coiled and ready to launch his stone. It’s a departure from the more static representations of the same subject by earlier artists.
Meanwhile, across town in the Cornaro Chapel, Bernini pushes the boundaries of sacred art with The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa. This isn’t quiet piety—it’s divine rapture at full volume.
Teresa swoons back, lips parted, as an angel gently raises a golden arrow to pierce her heart. The folds of her habit swirl like stage curtains, framing a scene as sensual as it is spiritual.
Lit from above by a hidden window, the whole composition blurs the line between mysticism and eroticism. It’s sculpture as stagecraft: emotion in motion, frozen mid-transcendence.
>>> Click here to book a Borghese tour
I hope you’ve enjoyed my guide to the most famous Baroque paintings. You may enjoy these other art travel guides:
- famous Andy Warhol artworks
- famous Picasso paintings
- famous Matisse paintings
- famous Chagall paintings
- famous Kahlo paintings
- famous paintings in the United States
- famous paintings in Europe
- famous paintings by Leonardo da Vinci
- famous paintings by Raphael
Pin it for later.
