National Gallery takes to streets of London

The staff and customers of a Soho sex shop had something new to look at yesterday - a life-sized reproduction of a Caravaggio painting that had been hung up outside the establishment overnight.

The high-quality digital copy of Salome Receives the Head of John the Baptist hangs in a gilt frame just a whisker away from the Harmony sex shop.

It is just one of 45 high-quality reproductions of masterpieces by artists such as Rubens, Titian and Claude Monet that have been displayed in the streets of central London by the National Gallery in an effort to bring art to a new urban audience.

For the next 12 weeks, passers-by can stumble across this "urban intervention" as part of an initiative called The Grand Tour, which is aimed at "getting the public to look and think about art", according to the gallery.

The gallery has created a map marking the locations of all the works, with themed tours that cater for lovers, or take in the more "heavy-hitting" works by Titian, Seurat and Van Eyck.

Other works on show included Leonardo da Vinci's The Virgin of the Rocks, displayed in a side road off Regent Street, Bartoleme Bermejo's St Michael Triumphs over the Devil outside the London Fire Station on Shaftesbury Avenue, and George Stubbs' equestrian portrait Whistlejacket, hung outside the Palace Theatre, which is currently showing the musical Spamalot.

Two members of staff at Harmony thought the Caravaggio painting fitted its new surroundings rather well. "It's not a bad location for it," one staff member said. "There were prostitutes in the Bible after all, and you'll find plenty here."

The women were surprised by how much admiration the work had already received. "I think it's a good idea. It's culture for the masses," one said.

An office worker from central London, said: "I hear that Caravaggio was a player in his time so this location might have suited him. I have never been inside the National Gallery but I like the way this painting looks here."

The initiative is an inversion of a prank by the graffiti artist Banksy, who hung his own work inside the National Gallery a few years ago.

Charles Saumarez Smith, the director of the National Gallery, said the project came about through the gallery's desire to "democratise" art. "These paintings represent the most popular works in the National Gallery and in bringing them out on the streets, we have sought to democratise the experience of art," he said."It's a way of getting people to look and think about the works of artists outside the gallery."The art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon said that he hoped the scheme would draw younger generations into the gallery. "It's a wonderful piece of city surrealism and I hope it inspires people," he said.

The highlights

The Ambassadors (1533)

Hans Holbein the Younger, 27-29 Berwick Street

The Arnolfini Portrait (1434)

Jan Van Eyck, 109 Wardour Street

The Fighting Temeraire (1839)

Joseph Mallord William Turner, 33 Golden Square

Mr and Mrs Andrews (1750)

Thomas Gainsborough, 12-26 Lexington Street

Three Men and a Boy (1647-8)

The Le Nain Brothers, Little Marlborough Street

A Grotesque Old Woman (1525)

Attributed to Quinten Massys, 33-43 Fouberts Place

The Virgin of the Rocks (1486)

Leonardo da Vinci, Marlborough Court

Bathers at Asnieres (1884)

Georges Seurat, Hamley's, 188 Regent Street

Samson and Delilah (1610)

Peter Paul Rubens, Ganton Street

The Entombment (1500-1)

Michelangelo, 64-72 Regent Street

Venus and Mars (1485)

Sandro Botticelli, Kingly Court

Sunflowers (1888)

Vincent Van Gogh, 43 Frith Street

The Water-Lily Pond (1899)

Claude-Oscar Monet, 40 Neal Street

Belshazzar's Feast (1636-8)

Rembrandt, Wardour Street

Bacchus and Ariadne (1523)

Titian, 124-126 Wardour Street