How to Cite a Painting, Photograph, or Artwork in MLA

How to Cite Artwork in MLA: Quick Answer

Name the artist, italicize a titled work, give the composition year, then document the container you used. A museum visit puts the year in the publication-date slot (comma, then museum and city). The same work on the museum website or on Wikimedia Commons puts the year in the optional composition-date slot (period, then site name and URL). A plate in a book is usually cited as the book. An image you reprint in the paper also needs a Fig. caption.

The first sentence is the current How to Cite an Image page, which still reprints the Cameron, Bearden, and Karasik samples below. The comma-versus-period and medium sentences come from How do I cite a museum image that I viewed in person or online?, an Ask the MLA note that still carries an eighth-edition banner; the ninth-edition image page keeps the same Bearden pair. The book-image sentence is How do I cite an image reproduced in a book?. The caption sentence is How should I format captions for figures that I include in my paper?. The Wikimedia sentence is the 26 March 2025 note. The ascribed-title sentence is How should I style the name of an artwork with an ascribed title?. The semicolon rule is When should citation information in captions be separated by commas instead of semicolons?.

Cite the version you actually saw

Paintings, sculptures, photographs, and other works of visual art are physical objects. Most student papers never cite the object itself. They cite a digital file on MoMA's collection site, a Wikimedia Commons page, a plate in an art-history monograph, a scan inside a journal article, or a photograph the writer took in the gallery. Two papers can discuss Romare Bearden's The Train and still need different works-cited entries. One writer stood in front of the collage at the Museum of Modern Art. The other opened MoMA's website. A third opened the Commons file page. MLA documents each path instead of inventing a single "artwork format."

This page is the MLA viewing-context map for visual art. Use the artwork citation generator for a painting or sculpture you can name by artist, title, year, and museum. Use the image citation generator for a photograph, figure, chart, or other image whose container is a site, book, or file. Moving-image stills belong on how to cite films in MLA. A generated picture belongs on how to cite AI, not in the museum-object template.

Why the year sometimes takes a comma and sometimes a period

The most common MLA artwork error is not a missing medium. It is treating the composition year as if it were always a publication date. The Style Center uses the same Bearden collage twice so the punctuation change is visible:

Copy the punctuation from the path you used, not from a generic "cite a painting" template. A comma after 1975 on the website entry would claim that MoMA published the collage in 1975. A period after 1975 on the in-person entry would leave the museum hanging without a date slot. A Wikimedia Commons entry uses the same period-after-the-year pattern as the museum site.

Medium is optional, and it goes last

MLA 9th edition does not require oil on canvas, gelatin silver print, or marble in every artwork entry. Those details are optional elements. Add the medium when your argument depends on it—when you contrast a bronze cast with a plaster model, or a vintage print with a later reproduction. Do not splice it between the year and the museum as if it were a required core element. That older classroom pattern still circulates; it is not the current MLA template.

Official MLA Style Center examples

The entries below are the Style Center's own samples, not reconstructed museum labels. Keep the wording, italics, and punctuation. If your local museum wall card disagrees with a handbook example, cite the object you saw and the container you used; do not "correct" Bearden or Cameron to match a blog template.

Painting or collage viewed in a museum

The museum-image post uses Romare Bearden's collage as the in-person model. The same pattern covers a painting or sculpture you studied on site: artist, italic title, year, museum, city.

The same work viewed on the museum website

Once the collage is a page on MOMA, the site becomes the container and the creation year moves out of the publication-date slot. The ninth-edition image page reprints this same line as "A Painting Viewed Online."

Photograph viewed in person

A titled photograph uses the same physical-object pattern as a painting. The Style Center's image page gives Julia Margaret Cameron's portrait of Tennyson:

Do not add photograph unless the medium matters to the sentence you are writing. The title already identifies a portrait; the museum and city tell the reader where that print was seen.

Untitled image in a magazine

When the image has no title, MLA uses a plain-language description instead of italics or quotation marks. The Style Center's sample is a cartoon:

Capitalize the first word of the description and any proper nouns. Do not write Untitled in italics unless that word is the work's actual title on the museum label or in the catalog raisonné.

Artwork on Wikimedia Commons

A Commons file is not the canvas in Vienna and not a Wikipedia encyclopedia article. The 26 March 2025 Wikimedia note treats Wikimedia as the container, the same way a museum website is a container. Use the commons.wikimedia.org File page, not the upload.wikimedia.org raw-image URL, so a reader can still see the file history and the object record. Use this pattern when the Commons file is what you actually opened.

Keep MLA's author string Bruegel, Pieter, the Elder and the encoded apostrophe in the File URL. The painting itself hangs in the Kunsthistorisches Museum; this entry documents the Commons file you opened. For the encyclopedia article Children's Games (Bruegel) on Wikipedia, use Wikipedia for research instead of this artwork pattern.

Artwork installed in an exhibition

If you are citing the object as it appeared in a show, the exhibition is the container and the run dates belong in the entry. The exhibition-artwork note uses a Turner painting at the Frick:

Cite the whole exhibition only when the show itself is the source—the argument, the grouping, the wall-to-wall claim—not one work inside it. The museum-exhibition note gives Unbound: Narrative Art of the Plains. 12 Mar.-4 Dec. 2016, National Museum of the American Indian, New York. and an artist-centered installation: Cave, Nick. Until. 15 Oct. 2016-Aug. 2017, Mass MOCA, North Adams. Both Ask the MLA posts still carry eighth-edition banners; the container logic matches the ninth-edition template.

Artwork reproduced in a book

Most of the time you do not build a special artwork entry at all. Describe the image in prose and cite the book:

If a page number is printed with the image, include it, as in MLA's Dodwell example: (fig. 45, p. 169) keyed to Dodwell, C. R. Anglo-Saxon Art: A New Perspective. Cornell UP, 1982. When you need the image to stand as its own source, treat it as a work inside the book and keep the original location MLA's sample supplies:

If the reproduction is transformed—a Polaroid of the painting, a tourist snapshot, a collage that includes the image—describe that object. Do not pretend you are citing the canvas in Edinburgh. The Style Center's book-image post also prints invented transformation examples; this page keeps only the recoverable MacMillan, Dodwell, and Cumming lines.

Reproduction inside a website article

The same "cite the container you read" rule applies online. MLA's first option is to discuss the image in prose and cite the article. The website-image note still carries an eighth-edition banner; the examples remain the Style Center's published samples:

The second option treats the reproduction as a work inside the article. Because you are not citing the Louvre panel, the Style Center starts with a description:

Keep MLA's wording, including the Style Center's "Leonard" in the altered-image example. The point of that entry is the description, not a chance to silently regularize the artist's name. The Smithsonian Smart News page for Daley was still live when this guide was checked.

Street art and public murals

Street art follows the same recoverability test as other visual sources. If you photographed the mural and reprint that photo as a figure, put the identifying facts in the caption and skip the works-cited list when the caption is complete. If the artist and address fit naturally in the sentence, MLA allows the prose alone:

Wall text is not the artwork

A museum label is a separate source. Cite it when you quote the museum's wording, not when you are only naming the object on the wall. The wall-text note starts with a description:

Exhibition catalogs

A printed catalog is a book. Do not force it into the museum-object template. The art-catalog note still carries an eighth-edition banner; its samples are real catalogs. The official page misspells Metropolitan as Metropolitian; use the museum's own spelling:

If you used the catalog's essay rather than the object in the gallery, the catalog is the source. If you used both, cite both.

Italics, roman type, and titles nobody gave the work

Named paintings, sculptures, collages, and photographs are independent works, so MLA italicizes the title even when the file lives on a museum website. Styling Titles of Online Works reprints the online Bearden line for that reason. Two official exceptions trip students who treat every visual name as a title:

• Ancient ascribed titles stay roman. The Style Center's sample sentence from Tobin Siebers keeps Venus de Milo in roman type: Would the Venus de Milo still be considered one of the great examples of aesthetic and human beauty if she had both her arms? (543). Ascribed titles of later works stay italic.
• Earthworks and buildings are not italic. The official sentence is We took a trip to see the Great Serpent Mound. The same roman treatment covers the Empire State Building or the Louvre pyramid as architecture, not as a titled canvas.
• A missing title is a description, not fake italics. Karasik's Cartoon. and TOTEM's Mural of a rough-legged hawk. are roman because they are descriptions.

Figure captions versus the works-cited list

When the image appears in your paper, MLA treats it as a figure, not as a hanging works-cited orphan. A short caption uses commas. A caption that reprints a full works-cited entry converts those periods to semicolons:

• Place the label and caption directly under the image, with the same one-inch margins as the rest of the paper.
• Number figures in the order readers encounter them: Fig. 1, Fig. 2.
• If the caption already names the artist, title, and location, you may omit a works-cited entry for that image.
• If the caption is only a short pointer, add a full works-cited entry for the version you consulted and key the caption to it.
• A table is not a figure. Tables use Table and a title above the grid; images use Fig. below the illustration.
• If you altered the image, say so. The edited-image note uses Adapted from plus the Morisot line above; the painting is Reading at the Cleveland Museum of Art, not a reconstructed wall label.

In prose, point to the figure instead of repeating the museum string: Cassatt's Mother and Child keeps the child's body inside the mother's enclosing arms (fig. 1).

AI-generated images are not museum objects

Do not drop DALL-E, Midjourney, or ChatGPT into the Bearden template. The 13 August 2025 generative-AI note says not to treat the tool as an author. For a visual work you reprint, put the prompt, tool, model, company, date, and share URL in the caption (MLA Handbook §1.7). The same facts can become a works-cited entry instead of a long caption. The rest of the AI decision tree lives on how to cite AI.

In-text citations for visual art

MLA in-text citations point to the works-cited entry, not to a wall-label accession number. For a titled work entered under the artist, the parenthetical citation is usually the artist's surname. Name the work in the sentence when the title is part of the analysis.

If two works by the same artist appear in the list, add a shortened italic title: (Bearden, Train). If the artist is unknown, use a shortened title or description—the same key you used to alphabetize the works-cited entry. For missing names generally, see how to cite a source with no author. For a composition date the museum marks as uncertain, keep the catalog's circa or c. rather than inventing a year; sources with no date cover the broader pattern.

Untitled works, unknown artists, and extra location facts

The MLA Handbook, 9th edition, tells writers to replace a missing title with a generic description, "neither italicized nor enclosed in quotation marks," capitalizing only the first word and proper nouns. Karasik's Cartoon. is the Style Center's published demonstration. Street-art entries use the same device: Mural of a rough-legged hawk, not a decorated fake title.

• Unknown artist. Start with the title or description. Do not write Anonymous unless the museum or catalog credits the work that way.
• City already in the name. You can omit a repeated city after Los Angeles County Museum of Art or Art Institute of Chicago. Keep New York after Museum of Modern Art.
• Circa dates. MLA's Velázquez sample keeps Circa 1618 instead of forcing a four-digit certainty the catalog does not claim.
• Accession numbers. Optional. Add one only when readers need it to find the exact object in a large collection.
• Your own snapshot of a work on the wall. If the photograph is only how you remember the object, cite the object or the museum site, not "Author's personal photograph," unless the snapshot itself is the evidence. For a photograph you made that is the source, see how to cite your own photograph.

Common mistakes

Putting the medium in the required slot

Templates that read Title. Year, oil on canvas, Museum, City put an optional element where MLA now expects the container. If the medium matters, place it at the end.

Using website punctuation for an in-person visit

A period after the year belongs to the online Bearden entry, where 1975 is not the publication date of MOMA. The in-person entry keeps the comma.

Pasting an upload.wikimedia.org URL

The 26 March 2025 note is explicit: several scans of the same painting can live on Commons. The File page lets a reader see which scan you used. The raw upload URL does not.

Citing the original when you used a reproduction

A plate in Cumming, a scan in Daley, a Commons file, or a jigsaw-puzzle image on Liberty Puzzles is not the object in the Scottish National Gallery or the Louvre. Describe the reproduction or cite the book, article, or database that carries it.

Quotation marks on painting and sculpture titles

MLA italicizes the title of a named work of visual art. Quotation marks are for short texts and untitled-description exceptions, not for The Train or Mother and Child. Ancient ascribed names such as Venus de Milo stay roman. Moving-image titles follow the same italics rule; see how to cite films in MLA when the "artwork" is a still from a movie rather than a unique object.

Requiring a city the institution already names

"Always include the city" is leftover advice. MLA drops a location that repeats the institution's name and keeps it when the name is not geographically specific.

Treating a caption and a works-cited entry as the same job

A Fig. line under the image tells readers what they are looking at. The works-cited list tells them how to recover the source. Complete captions can stand alone; incomplete captions need a list entry. Full bibliographic captions use semicolons, not a second copy of the hanging-indent entry pasted under the image.

Citation is not permission to reproduce the image

A correct MLA entry credits the artist and points to a recoverable version. It does not grant the right to reprint the image in a thesis, journal, or public website. The Style Center's permission note is blunt: in published work, the credit "must be worded in the way that the owner of the material specifies." A student paper may add a courtesy line in a note or caption. Museums and estates often require a separate reproduction request even when the citation is perfect. Fair use can cover a small, discussed figure in a classroom essay and still fail for a full-page color plate in a published book. When the image is the evidence, ask the rightsholder early or describe the work instead of reproducing it. See How do I indicate that I have permission to use an image or other material in my work?.

Official MLA sources

Read the Style Center posts next to the handbook template. The posts are the public version of the examples on this page:

• How to Cite an Image — Cameron photograph, Bearden online, Karasik cartoon
• Museum images viewed in person or online — the comma-versus-period Bearden pair
• Wikimedia pictures of artworks — Bruegel Children's Games, 26 March 2025
• Artwork from an exhibition — Turner at the Frick
• Museum exhibitions — Unbound and Cave, Until
• Images reproduced in a book — MacMillan, Dodwell, Velázquez in Cumming
• Images reproduced in a website article — Daley / Mona Lisa reproductions
• Figure captions and caption punctuation — Cassatt commas, van Gogh semicolons
• Ascribed titles and earthworks — Venus de Milo, Great Serpent Mound
• Street art — Geraluz, TOTEM, ATM
• Wall text, art catalogs, edited images, and permissions
• Citing generative AI — DALL-E caption, 13 August 2025

Related guides

• MLA citation style
• How to cite an image or photograph
• How to cite films and TV in MLA
• How to cite a website in MLA
• How to cite YouTube and online video in MLA
• How to cite a source with no author
• How to cite a source with no date
• Wikipedia for research
• How to cite AI
• How to cite your own photograph