To cite artwork in MLA style, start with the artist’s name, then the title of the work in italics, the date of composition, and the location where you viewed it or the source where you found it. The exact format shifts depending on whether you saw the piece in person, found it online, or encountered a reproduction in a book. Here’s how to handle each scenario.
Artwork Viewed in Person
When you see an original work of art at a museum or gallery, the works-cited entry follows a clean four-part structure: artist’s last name, title of the work in italics, date of composition, and the museum name along with its city.
Bearden, Romare. The Train. 1975, Museum of Modern Art, New York.
If the medium or materials matter to your discussion (oil on canvas, bronze, mixed media), you can add that detail at the end of the entry as an optional element. For most papers, you can leave it out.
Artwork Found on a Website
Online images of artwork need extra layers of information because you’re citing a reproduction, not the original. MLA treats the image as a work contained inside a larger container (the website or article where you found it). Since you’re not looking at the actual painting or sculpture, you begin the entry with a description rather than the artist’s name and title alone.
If the image appears inside a website article, structure the entry like this:
Digital reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. “So Is Mona Lisa Smiling? A New Study Says Yes,” by Jason Daley, 17 Mar. 2017. Smithsonian.com, www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/is-the-mona-lisa-smiling-new-study-180962580/.
The description comes first, followed by the article title as the container, the author of that article in the “Other contributors” slot, the publication date, the website name in italics, and the URL.
If the image appears on a website without an accompanying article (a product page, a gallery listing, or a standalone image), describe the image, then list the website name and URL. When there’s no visible date on the page, add an access date at the end:
Jigsaw puzzle image of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Liberty Puzzles, www.libertypuzzles.com/wooden-jigsaw-puzzles/mona-lisa. Accessed 25 Sept. 2018.
One important detail: if the image has been cropped, colorized, filtered, or otherwise altered, say so in your description. Replace “Digital reproduction” with “Digitally altered image” or whatever phrasing accurately characterizes what you’re looking at.
Artwork Reproduced in a Book
When a painting, photograph, or other image appears inside a book you’re reading, you usually don’t need a separate entry for the image itself. Instead, cite the book as a whole and refer to the specific image in your text using the figure number or page number the book provides:
In describing the influences of Byzantine silks on Anglo-Saxon art, C. R. Dodwell includes an image from the Bayeux Tapestry (fig. 45, p. 169).
Work Cited:
Dodwell, C. R. Anglo-Saxon Art: A New Perspective. Cornell UP, 1982.
If you want to give the artwork its own entry (useful when the image is central to your argument), treat it as a work contained in another work. List the artist, the title of the artwork in italics, the date of composition, the institution that holds the original, then the book’s publication details:
Velázquez, Diego. An Old Woman Cooking Eggs. Circa 1618, Scottish National Gallery. The Vanishing Velázquez, by Laura Cumming, Scribner, 2016, p. 27.
As with online reproductions, if the image has been transformed or presented in an unusual way, describe it accurately. A humorous photo of a cat posed with a famous painting, for example, would start with a description like “Cat photographed with Diego Velázquez’s Old Woman Cooking with Eggs” rather than crediting the original artist as if you were citing the painting itself.
In-Text Citations for Artwork
Your parenthetical citation in the body of your paper must match the first element of the corresponding works-cited entry. For a standard artwork entry, that’s usually the artist’s last name:
The bold geometry of the composition evokes the movement of a passing train (Bearden).
If you mention the artist’s name in your sentence, you don’t need a parenthetical citation at all:
Romare Bearden’s The Train uses bold geometry to evoke the movement of a passing train.
When the works-cited entry begins with a description instead of an artist’s name (as with many online reproductions), use a shortened version of that description in your parenthetical reference. The key rule is consistency: whatever appears first on the left margin of your works-cited entry is what goes inside the parentheses.
AI-Generated Artwork
If you’re incorporating an image created by a tool like DALL-E or Midjourney, MLA treats it differently from traditional artwork. You’ll likely present it as a figure with a caption rather than a standard works-cited entry, though you can do either.
Start with a description of the prompt you used (in quotation marks), then list the AI tool, the model name or version, the company that makes it, the date you generated the image, and a URL if one exists:
Fig. 1. “Create an expressionist-style image of two people standing on a beach looking at the ocean” prompt, DALL-E, version 3, OpenAI, 23 Sept. 2024, chatgpt.com/share/66f1c3a3-3f90-8000-9750-82c57c4a6592.
The same information works for a works-cited entry if you prefer that approach over a caption. Either way, the goal is to give your reader enough detail to understand what tool produced the image and what instructions you gave it.
Formatting Details That Matter
A few small things that are easy to get wrong:
- Titles of artworks are always italicized, whether it’s a painting, sculpture, photograph, or installation.
- Dates should match the date of the original work’s composition, not the date you viewed it or the date a reproduction was published. Use “circa” when the exact year isn’t known.
- Museum locations include the city but not the state or country, following MLA convention for well-known institutions.
- URLs should omit “https://” at the beginning. MLA style drops the protocol prefix.
- Descriptions (used when citing reproductions) are not italicized and not placed in quotation marks. They’re written in plain sentence case.
When your source doesn’t fit neatly into any standard category, MLA’s general guidance is to apply the principles that seem most consistent and sensible for your situation. Start with the element that identifies the work, use containers to show where you found it, and give the reader enough information to locate the source themselves.