The most Instagrammed paintings in the world revealed

Indeed, the images making the top ten are largely those that feel very familiar – even if that's just to look at, rather than a working knowledge of who made them, and their stories.

The Mona Lisa, or La Gioconda in da Vinci's native Italian (La Joconde for those in France, where the painting hands in the Louvre), was created in around 1503-1506 and is speculated to have been finessed until around 1517. As likely the most famous masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, if not in the western world, the painting has been described as "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world". This is likely due to the expression of its subject (probably of the Italian noblewoman Lisa Gherardini): many suggest it's enigmatic in its smile, others have suggested she might have just farted. Fun fact: Mona Lisa has no clearly visible eyebrows or eyelashes.

In second place for the most Instagrammed painting is Gustav Klimt's The Kiss, the eminently postcard-worthy image beloved of poster-makers and aunties with eclectic fridge magnets alike. This was painted at some point in 1907 and 1908, during the height of what scholars call Austrian Symbolist painter Klimt's "Golden Period". Notably, its hashtags number only around a sixth of the Mona Lisa's, counting 247,346.

The research was carried out by printer cartridge shop CartridgeSave, which trawled through previous articles on the most famous paintings of all time including those on Time Out and Ranker Art. The researchers then surveyed 2,083 people to find the top 15 most recognisable paintings worldwide and used Instagram analytics to calculate the number of times images or videos had been posted with the hashtag of each painting.

Also in the top 15 is The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci, taking a respectable third place; Edvard Munch's The Scream makes fourth; The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh comes fifth and Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer makes sixth place.