[brandall10]

Then you should see the Last Supper, it's nearly 30 feet wide (yes, it's a mural). Be warned though, what you see is mostly preservation work now, Leonardo used paint that has poor aging properties.

I've been to many of the top museums of the world now, esp. after traveling through Europe this summer, and my conclusion is I don't understand what makes something a masterpiece. I get that folks like Leonardo and Rembrandt have an incredible sense for light/shadow and it shows, but most of the things that truly impressed me were from little known Enlightenment period artists.

Did you know what Van Gogh thought of The Starry Night, his top masterwork? Nothing. He referred to it in a letter to his brother as being in a pile of paintings of no consequence and didn't even bother spending the money to ship it for evaluation. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is a wonderful experience if you happen to be there... as an artist, he seemed to have great insight as to where he wanted to go and how he compared to his contemporaries. He would have surely felt the world had gone mad for elevating a failed experiment of his to such heights, but there it is.