A 1964 silkscreen portrait of Marilyn Monroe, known as "Shot Sage Blue Marilyn," will be auctioned in May by auction house Christie's. The work could sell for $200 million (€182 million), making it the most-expensive 20th-century artwork to be auctioned. Celebrating her iconic status, Andy Warhol made many Monroe works, including five different versions of this portrait, each in different shades.

This self portrait is reminiscent of religious iconography. Andy Warhol's parents came from a village in the Carpathian Mountains (now Slovakia)#, and emigrated to the US in the 1920s via Bremen. His mother was a devout Catholic, and during the hours spent attending mass with her as a child, he would stare for hours at the paintings of Christ and the saints in the church.

After studying commercial art, Warhol initially worked as an advertiser and designer for a shoe manufacturer. He was an early adopter of silk screen prints, and exhibited his early works at the Bodley Gallery in New York in 1959. While promoting himself as an "anti-artist," he also developed a fascination for repetition in his motifs: shoes, cans, eyes — or the lips of Marilyn Monroe.

At the beginning of the 1960s, the young commercial artist started making works of everyday objects, inspired by an art dealer who told him to paint whatever meant the most to him. From then on he created stencils of dollar bills, soup cans, telephones or typewriters. Warhol called this a "reproduction of the everyday." Before him, no one had dared call reproductions of such mundane objects art.

Elvis Presley as a cowboy, Elizabeth Taylor or Marilyn Monroe as a pin-up: Icons of US pop culture were another of Warhol's favorite motifs. These works quickly made him famous in the art scene. In 1962, he exhibited for the first time one of his "Campbell's Soup Cans" paintings: a milestone in art history, establishing Warhol's reputation as the most-renowned pop artist in the United States.

Many paintings and graphic prints by the world-famous pop artist are iconographic. Andy Warhol's painting "Mao," a portrait of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong, is available in several color variations as part of a series created in 1972 in Warhol's famous New York City studio, The Factory.

Serial repetition with variations in color became Warhol's trademark. In the mid-1960s, while Warhol also produced music and underground films, he let other members of The Factory create his silkscreen series for him as part of his artistic community.

Andy Warhol often used Polaroids as a template for his serialized paintings; he liked the fact that they captured random moments. He wasn't a fan of elaborately staged works by other contemporary artists of his time. Debbie Harry, front singer of the band Blondie, was immortalized this way by Warhol in 1980. She was also his first guest on the MTV show "Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes."

Andy Warhol, who had more than 100 wigs and never left the house without a white-blonde headdress, carried a camera everywhere he went. His photo book "America" was a smash hit in 1985. He dedicated his last painting to the sacrament of Jesus Christ. He died unexpectedly in 1987 following gallbladder surgery.

Created around 1500, this painting of Christ attributed to Leonardo da Vinci is one of the master's 20 still existing paintings. In 1958 "Salvator Mundi" was sold for just $60 because it was thought to be a copy. But it fetched more than four times Christie's pre-sale estimate on November 15, 2017, when it was sold for over $450 million (€382 million) — setting a world record for auctioned art.

From 1954-55, Pablo Picasso did a series of 15 paintings inspired by Delacroix's "Les Femmes d'Alger," with versions named "A" through "O." He started them after the death of Henry Matisse, as a tribute to his friend and artistic rival. "Version O" broke the world record for an auction sale, selling for $179.4 million (167.1 million euros) at Christie's in May 2015.

At a Christie's auction held in November 2015, seven potential buyers spent nine frantic minutes bidding on this painting. It was finally snapped by a telephone bidder from China. The nude, painted in 1917-18, provoked a scandal at its first exhibition in Paris. The police shut down the art show after a crowd gathered outside the window.

Modigliani's work "Nu couché (sur le côté gauche)" caused such a controversy when it was first shown in Paris in 1917 that the police had to close the exhibition. The Italian artist's oil painting became the most expensive artwork to have been sold at New York auction house Sotheby's in May 2018.

This 1907 painting by Gustav Klimt is considered one of the most elaborate and representative of his "golden phase." In 2006, it was sold through a private sale brokered by Christie's for a record sum for a painting, $135 million. That same year, Jackson Pollock's classic drip painting "No. 5 1948" broke that record, obtaining $140 million through another private sale.

Van Gogh allegedly said of the homeopathic doctor Dr. Gachet, whom he painted here in 1890, that "he was sicker than I am." The plant is a foxglove, which is used to make the drug digitalis. In 1990, the work was auctioned off to Ryoei Saito, Japan's second-largest paper manufacturer, for $82.5 million, making it the world's priciest painting at the time (the price above has been adjusted).

This 1969 triptych documents Francis Bacon's friendship and rivalry with fellow painter Lucian Freud. At the time it was sold, in November 2013, it obtained the highest price for a work of art at an auction, until Picasso - and now Modigliani - surpassed that record in 2015.

This 1876 work by Impressionist master Renoir depicts a dance venue for high society on the outskirts of Paris, the Moulin de la Galette. One of Renoir's most famous works, it exudes the joie de vivre that is characteristic of his style. In 1990, the work was purchased for $78.1 million (adjusted price above) by Japanese buyer Ryoei Saito, along with van Gogh's "Portrait of Dr. Gachet."

This portrait of an adolescent holding a pipe and wearing a garland of flowers in his hair was created during the Spanish master's "Rose Period" in 1905. Just a little under a century later, the painting fetched an impressive sum of $104.2 million at a Sotheby's auction in 2004 (price adjusted above).

This agonizing character painted by Edvard Munch is one of the most iconic paintings in the world. The Expressionist artist had actually made four versions of it: Three are in Norwegian museums, and the fourth one was sold for the screeching price of $119.9 million in May 2012 at Sotheby's, which would be adjusted to $130.7 million today.

Picasso is well represented among the highest earning painters. His 1905 masterpiece "Fillette a la corbeille fleurie" ("Young Girl with a Flower Basket") was sold – along with two other Rose Period paintings – by the artist himself to writer Gertrude Stein in a sale that helped launch his career. The work, which was later part of David and Peggy Rockefeller's collection, sold for $115 million.

The French painter Claude Monet created multiple landscape series that depict the same subject in different types of light and seasons, showing off his ability to capture atmosphere. The painting "Meules" (1890), from his "Haystacks" series, fetched $110.7 million (€98 million) at a Soethby's auction — the record for a Monet and the first impressionist painting to cross the $100-million threshold.

Inspired by his mistress Marie-Thérèse Walther, Picasso created this painting in a single day in 1932. If you add the eight minutes and six seconds it took for the auction record bid at Christie's in May 2010, it still appears to be well-invested time. Its price could be adjusted to $115.7 million today.

Sandro Botticelli's masterpiece was sold at auction at Sotheby's in January 2021 for $92.2 million. The Italian Renaissance master had never fetched so much at auctions before. Prior to the sale, the work had been estimated at about $60 million.