Like Hollywood stars, celebrity paintings now have to woo punters and win competitions

Paintings are celebrities, forever starring in "blockbuster" exhibitions, but some are doomed to permanent residence on the red carpet. Not for them the simple immortality of being Good Art. No, these paintings must represent something over and above themselves. Ten of them are at the moment battling to be named the Greatest Painting in Britain, in a beauty contest run by the Today programme and the National Gallery.

It is not surprising that Today is running this pictorial sweepstake, even though, as John Humphrys confessed after Alexander McQueen tried (unsuccessfully) to galvanise the nation around Delaroche's Execution of Lady Jane Grey, radio is perhaps not the ideal medium for this parlour game. But while Westminster is on holiday, it's the perfect Today story.

It is, however, quite odd that the National Gallery is taking part; I thought it loved all its children equally. Yet with Tate Britain's Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy (whom we now discover, thanks to a special press release, was actually called Blanche), battling it out alongside the Arnolfinis and Jesus in his loincloth, the gallery is in a frenzy. Its mild-mannered director, Charles Saumarez Smith, confessed to me that at the outset he was convinced Constable's Hay Wain would carry the day. However, doubt has now begun to seep into his equable mind, either because he feels Piero della Francesca (The Baptism of Christ) or Jan van Eyck (the Arnolfinis) might pip Constable at the post, or because he fears Tate might storm to victory with Mr and Mrs Clark.

Meanwhile, as an alumna of the Courtauld Institute, I received a personal e-mail from its communications department urging me to vote for its sole contender, Manet's Bar at the Folies-Bergere. What pressure!

It is obvious why the Courtauld should be more concerned with a contest on the Today programme than (say) with preparing for its autumn term. Triumphing over not only the National Gallery, but also Tate Britain and the National Gallery of Scotland (the token regional venue, gamely proffering a hopeless outsider - Henry Raeburn's Revd Dr Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch), would do wonders.

If Manet's lonely, lovely barmaid wins on 5 September, the institute will have to prepare for a rush on Folies-Bergere mugs, fridge magnets and calendars.

Manet's painting has the future of the Courtauld Gallery resting on its wooden frame, as have the Arnolfinis, over at the National. Today's shortlist reveals the institutional champions, whose task is to woo the public. Yet having spent so much time as beacons of tourism, their status as works of art has been eroded.

Last week, ending a family holiday in Italy, we got lost en route to the airport. Muddling down a sequence of vicious hairpins, we arrived in the tiny village of Regello. Inside the deserted village church, an old man appeared and pointed us towards a single painting: a masterpiece by Masaccio, one of the heroes of the early Renaissance.

He switched on a light, illuminating a gilded triptych of the Madonna and child attended by four saints and a pair of angels with brightly feathered wings. The baby sucked his fingers and stood on his mother's knee; she held his bare feet with a slim hand. Forget celebrity status: Masaccio's triptych, in its dark home, was simply a very great painting, on its own, untroubled by news bulletins and online votes.

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