# The 14 Best Paintings With Hidden Faces

> Rocks with noses, tables with eyes, a bowl of vegetables that turns into a man. Old Flemish riddles meet surrealist double images here.

*By YPB Team · Published October 24, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-14-best-paintings-with-hidden-faces*

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## Current results (1 vote)

1. **Vertumnus** — score 1000/1000
   Arcimboldo's portrait of Emperor Rudolf II as the Roman god of the seasons, built from fruit, vegetables and flowers.
2. **Mae West's Face** — score 753/1000
   Dalí's 1934–35 room design where curtains, a fireplace and a sofa become the actress's hair, nose and lips.
3. **Anthropomorphic Landscape (Merian)** — score 652/1000
   Matthäus Merian's 1624 etching of a hilly landscape that reads as a man's head lying on its side.
4. **The Tree Man** — score 565/1000
   Bosch's hollow giant with a tavern in its body and a human face turned back toward the viewer.
5. **Anthropomorphic Landscape (Momper)** — score 565/1000
   Joos de Momper's mountain scene where cliffs, trees and paths add up to a giant head.
6. **The Great Masturbator** — score 565/1000
   Dalí's 1929 painting built around a huge sleeping profile he said came from a rock at Cap de Creus.
7. **The Librarian** — score 565/1000
   Arcimboldo's figure assembled entirely from books, with bookmarks for fingers.
8. **The Garden of Earthly Delights** — score 565/1000
   Bosch's triptych, where a yellow rock in the Eden panel forms a profile with a sharp nose and insect eyelashes.
9. **Landscape with a Sleeping Peddler** — score 565/1000
   Herri met de Bles's landscape where monkeys rob a sleeping peddler under a rock shaped like a nose.
10. **Allegory of Iconoclasm** — score 565/1000
   Marcus Gheeraerts's 1566 satire where the head of a monk is a mountain swarming with clerics.
11. **Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire** — score 462/1000
   Dalí's 1940 double image where two women in a market turn into the face of Voltaire.
12. **The Conjurer** — score 462/1000
   Bosch-school panel whose cups, balls, frog and hoop form a face when you turn the picture on its side.
13. **The Vegetable Gardener** — score 0/1000
   Arcimboldo's bowl of vegetables that becomes a man's face when turned upside down.
14. **Swans Reflecting Elephants** — score 0/1000
   Dalí's 1937 lake where three swans and trees, mirrored in the water, turn into elephants.

Tags: painting, art, optical illusion, surrealism, hidden faces