Las Meninas by Velázquez, 1656. Photograph: © Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
Swordfish just caught in the rich fishing grounds off eastern Sicily were lined up on market tables. The sea surrounded the peninsula that had been inhabited since ancient Greek times. We'd travelled in a rickety bus over the island's mountains to get to Syracuse and it was definitely worth the trip, but there was a bonus when we visited the little town museum. Among the dolls, coaches and local crafts we came across something that staggered and overwhelmed me.
Here was Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio's the huge altarpiece The Burial of St Lucy. It is his greatest painting and yet few have ever seen it. I could never have appreciated it in the same way from a reproduction in a book. Even a travelling exhibition loses something. When you see Caravaggio's paintings in the towns for which they were made you understand the generosity of his vocation to make art for the poor.
You really need to be there to appreciate the specific character of such achievements. Works of art are like people, every one is different not just in simple attributes but also at a more mysterious level. There are no general rules about art. There are only works of art and you need to meet each one face to face. I've looked at images for years in books only to find, when I saw the real thing, that it was different in basic physical characteristics from my expectation - at the crudest level, bigger or smaller. Then again the colours of a reproduction are never, ever identical to the colours of the original. If you want to know a work of art, you cannot accept substitutes.
So - what are the journeys that are really worth making to see art? To launch the Guardian's new arts blog, let's work together to make a definitive list of works of art everyone should, at least once in a lifetime, travel to encounter - a list of 50 Works of Art to See Before You Die.
I'm kicking off the debate by listing my own top 20 (see a slideshow of the works here):
Jan van Eyck, The Madonna of Chancellor Rolin, c.1435, Musée du Louvre, Paris
Caravaggio, The Burial of St. Lucy (1608), Museo di Palazzo Bellomo, Syracuse, Sicily
Rembrandt, Aristotle with a Bust of Homer (1654), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
San Rock Art, South African National Museum, Cape Town
Paul Cézanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire from Les Lauves (1904 - 6), Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow
Michelangelo, Moses (installed 1545), Church of San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome
Leonardo da Vinci, The Adoration of the Magi, (c. 1481), Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Mark Rothko, The Rothko Chapel (paintings 1965-66; chapel opened 1971), Houston, Texas
Vermeer, View of Delft (c.1660-61), Mauritshuis, The Hague
Matthias Grünewald, The Isenheim Altarpiece (c.1509-15), Musée Unterlinden, Colmar, France
Hans Holbein, The Dead Christ, (1521-2), Kunstmuseum, Basel
Velázquez, Las Meninas (1656), Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
Funerary Mask of Tutankhamun (1333-1323BC), Egyptian Museum, Cairo
Jackson Pollock, One: Number 31, 1950, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Masaccio, The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise (c.1427), Brancacci Chapel, Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence.
Pablo Picasso, Guernica (1937), Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid
Titian, Danaë (c. 1544-6), Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples
Raphael, The School of Athens (1510-11), Stanza della Signatura, Vatican Palace, Rome
Parthenon Sculptures ("Elgin Marbles"), c. 444 BC, British Museum, London
Henri Matisse, The Dance (1910), Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
These are the works I swear by, always return to, and cannot forget. They are masterpieces that I guarantee will enrich, even change, your life. But my point of view is partial. It is Eurocentric for one thing - I expect the Guardian's millions of readers around the world to help correct that. On the other hand, I will be fighting my case. I think a work of art worth travelling to see has to be a really great statement about serious things. Something not just to fill your life but deepen it. What do you think? What do you love? Have your say and help complete this list of the supreme art of all time.
