In 2012, in Rotating Quiz #77, Stephen Perry asked:

| 9. the 'Mona Lisa' is the most famous painting of all time.
| what's the 2nd most famous one?

His expected answer was "The Starry Night" (Van Gogh), but when
this was challenged, it turned out he had based this answer
on a top-10 list from "a random source on the internet that
agreed with what I recall from my high school humanities class".

Stephen invited conflicting evidence and, in response, I said:

> The obvious start was a Google phrase search on
>
> "second most famous painting"
>
> On the first 2 pages of 10 hits each, there were 7 that said it was
> "The Scream" (Munch), but that'll be exaggerated because it's been in
> the news recently and all the pages are reports of the same news story
> or refer to it...
>
> Of the other 13 hits, 8 did not answer the question because they
> were about qualified favorites (like "da Vinci's second most famous")
> or were debates or queries on the subject.
>
> And the 5 remaining hits named 5 different painting as the
> second most famous:
> * The Sistine Chapel ceiling (Michelangelo)...
> * "The Starry Night" (Van Gogh)...
> * "The Last Supper" (Leonardo da Vinci)...
> * "Girl with a Pearl Earring" (Vermeer)...
> * "The Persistence of Memory" (Dali)...

I went on to check Google hit counts on the individual paintings,
and then proposed that

> ...that at least "The Last Supper", the Sistine Chapel
> ceiling, and "The Scream" (listed alphabetically by artist) should
> be accepted, and probably also "American Gothic"...

which Stephen agreed to do.

Looking back at my old posting now, it occurred to me to try the
search

"second most famous painting"

again, and see what it indicated now that "The Scream" was no longer
in the news. Well, Google's practice now is to interrupt its list
of top hits with a list of "people also ask" pages, and I decided
to check those as well as the top 20 actual hits. As before,
I ignored qualified claims such as "da Vinci's second most famous".

And the result this time there was a clear consensus on "The Last
Supper" (Leonardo da Vinci), with 6 votes:

http://www.easy-oil-painting-techniques.org/leonardo-da-vinci-paintings.html
http://aleteia.org/2019/11/22/leonardos-the-last-supper-is-the-second-most-famous-painting-in-the-world/
http://www.pinterest.ca/pin/paintings--527132331365826778/
http://rosbena.com/list/ten-most-famous-paintings-in-the-world/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SugOkY3vxIM
http://twitter.com/jerrysaltz/status/1282728552954236928

4 other paintings received one vote each. In alphabetical order
by artist, they were:

* "The Birth of Venus" (Botticelli) according to
http://artistro.com/blogs/news/30-most-famous-artworks-in-history-the-greatest-art-of-all-time
* Sistine Chapel ceiling (Michelangelo) according to
http://artsandculture.google.com/story/6-of-the-world-39-s-most-visited-paintings/sAVhFizZbAwNJA?hl=en
* "The Scream (Munch) according to
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathonkeats/2016/03/18/seen-the-scream-this-new-york-exhibit-provides-a-fresh-perspective-on-the-great-edvard-munch/
* "Starry Night" (Van Gogh) according to
http://top-10-list.org/2011/08/01/top-10-most-famous-paintings/

So now we know.
--
Mark Brader, Toronto "Remember that computers are very,
msb@vex.net very fast..." -- Steve Summit

My text in this article is in the public domain.