# What is the greatest unfinished masterpiece in art history?

> Abandoned, interrupted, or still going after a century of scaffolding. Greatness here gets measured by what was left on the table.

*By YPB Team · Published August 16, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-greatest-unfinished-masterpiece-in-art-history*

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## Current results (0 votes)

1. **The Adoration of the Magi**
   Leonardo abandoned this Florentine commission in 1482 at the underpainting stage and left for Milan.
2. **Sagrada Família**
   Gaudí's Barcelona basilica, begun in 1882 and still under construction.
3. **St Jerome in the Wilderness**
   Leonardo's gaunt saint, laid in as monochrome underpaint and never carried further.
4. **The Sforza Horse**
   Leonardo's colossal equestrian monument: the clay model was shot at by archers and the bronze became cannon.
5. **The Entombment**
   Michelangelo's panel in the National Gallery, left with bare patches of primed wood.
6. **Rondanini Pietà**
   Michelangelo's last sculpture, still being cut days before he died at 88.
7. **The Bride**
   Klimt's final canvas, left on the easel in 1918 with the underdrawing showing through.
8. **Washington's unfinished portrait**
   Gilbert Stuart's Athenaeum head of George Washington — unfinished, and the face on the dollar bill.
9. **The Tennis Court Oath**
   Jacques-Louis David's revolutionary group scene, abandoned as its subjects went to the guillotine.
10. **The Battle of Anghiari**
   Leonardo's Florentine mural, ruined by his own wax experiment and lost behind a later wall.
11. **The Gates of Hell**
   Rodin worked on this doorway for 37 years and never delivered it in his lifetime.
12. **Crazy Horse Memorial**
   A South Dakota mountain carving begun in 1948 and still decades from completion.

Tags: sculpture, art, paintings