If you're looking for art that you've heard of (i.e. museum-quality stuff), it'll be pricey. The two biggest vendors are Getty Images (the
Bridgeman Art Library or Corbis (
their museum partners or
The Atelier ). For either one of these, the art is priced not so much on how much of it you buy (though that can be a factor) as it is on usage.
The rights control and ownership of fine art is incredibly complicated, which is part of the reason it costs a lot to license. For example, the Italian government gets paid for every commercial usage of Italian Renaissance art and may even have to be involved in granting permission for the usage.
That said, "home usage" or "one time usage" for a realtively low rez image (any display is low rez by the stock image definition) would be among the cheapest ways to get them. You'll have to call their offices and negotiate pricing with an agent to find out exactly how much.
You can also google "royalty free fine art" to see what you can find. There have been royalty free CD's published in the past with some nice stuff, but much (most?) of it has been discontinued because of copyright/ownership/usage issues. I don't think you'll find any fine art in the royalty free sections of either Corbis or Getty collections, though you can check. You will find LOTS of CDs with high rez art files, but they're likely to be stuff you've never heard of by contemporary artists -- usually designed for business usage in ads, brochures, annual reports, etc.
Probably more than you wanted to know
