Frick Collection

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Art for Dummies listed the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore as, work for work, the best museum in America because the ratio of great art to square footage was so strong. But New York's Frick Collection is probably even better. Right on 5th Avenue across from Central Park, it's a Golden Age mansion with more masterpieces than I've ever seen in a handful of rooms. Photos can never do these works justice, but here are a few:

Bronzino:

Holbein's portraits of rivals Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell, staring at each other across the fireplace:



Remember the film All the Vermeers in New York? Three of them are at the Frick:



The one that is most tragically uncapturable in reproduction is Bellini's St. Francis in the Desert. The original painting is stunning: