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Famous Paintings: fun facts and quiz
The essentials in 7 ideas, with fun facts, an illustrated story and a quiz to see how much you know.
The essentials
The Mona Lisa
Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa in the early 1500s. It hangs in the Louvre in Paris, behind bulletproof glass, and may be the world’s most famous painting.
Key fact
It’s surprisingly small: about 77 × 53 cm.
The Starry Night
Vincent van Gogh painted The Starry Night in 1889, inspired by the view from his room at an asylum in southern France. Its swirling sky is instantly recognisable.
Key fact
Van Gogh sold very few paintings in his lifetime.
The Scream
Norwegian painter Edvard Munch made The Scream in 1893. He created several versions, in paint, pastel and print.
Key fact
A pastel version sold for about 120 million dollars in 2012.
Girl with a Pearl Earring
Johannes Vermeer painted Girl with a Pearl Earring around 1665, in the Dutch city of Delft. Nobody knows for sure who the girl was.
Key fact
Vermeer left behind only about 35 known paintings.
The Sistine Chapel
Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling in Rome between 1508 and 1512, including the famous Creation of Adam.
Key fact
Michelangelo saw himself mainly as a sculptor.
Guernica
Pablo Picasso painted Guernica in 1937, after the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica in the Spanish Civil War. It’s a huge black, white and grey protest against war.
Key fact
Guernica is almost 8 metres wide.
Impressionism
In the 1870s, painters like Claude Monet worked outdoors with quick brushstrokes, trying to catch the light. A critic mocked Monet’s “Impression, Sunrise”, and the name stuck.
Key fact
Monet painted his water lilies around 250 times.
Fun facts
The Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911 and was missing for over two years.
Van Gogh himself called The Starry Night a failure.
Munch wrote that The Scream came from a sunset walk when he sensed “an infinite scream passing through nature”.
Scans show the girl once had eyelashes and stood before a green curtain, which has faded to black.
Michelangelo painted the ceiling standing on scaffolding, not lying on his back, as legend says.
Guernica only came to Spain in 1981: Picasso wanted it kept abroad until democracy returned.
Rejected by the official Paris Salon, the Impressionists held their own exhibition in 1874.
Story: Two Guilders for a Vermeer
Two Guilders for a Vermeer
1881, The Hague. A dirty, damaged painting comes up at auction. Collector Arnoldus des Tombe buys it for 2 guilders and 30 cents.
Once cleaned, it turns out to be a Vermeer: a girl in a blue-and-yellow turban, glancing over her shoulder, a pearl at her ear.
Des Tombe left it to the Mauritshuis museum when he died in 1902. Today it’s among the most famous paintings in the world.
True or false?
Tap your answer to see if you got it, and why.
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Question 1 of 10
Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa.
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True. He worked on it for years, from about 1503.
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Question 2 of 10
Van Gogh painted The Starry Night.
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True. In 1889, at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.
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Question 3 of 10
Edvard Munch made more than one version of The Scream.
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True. In paint, pastel, crayon and lithograph.
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Question 4 of 10
Vermeer was a Dutch painter.
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True. He lived and worked in Delft.
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Question 5 of 10
Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
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True. Including the Creation of Adam.
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Question 6 of 10
Guernica was painted in response to a bombing.
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True. The 1937 bombing of the town of Guernica.
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Question 7 of 10
Impressionism got its name from a Monet painting.
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True. From “Impression, Sunrise”, of 1872.
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Question 8 of 10
The Mona Lisa hangs in the Prado in Madrid.
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False. It hangs in the Louvre, in Paris.
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Question 9 of 10
Van Gogh was rich and famous in his lifetime.
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False. He struggled for money; his fame came after his death.
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Question 10 of 10
The Scream was painted by Pablo Picasso.
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False. It was made by Edvard Munch.
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Sources
- Musée du Louvre — Mona Lisa
- MoMA — The Starry Night
- Mauritshuis — Girl with a Pearl Earring
- Museo Reina Sofía — Guernica
- Vatican Museums — Sistine Chapel
- Uffizi Galleries; Rijksmuseum; Museo del Prado — collection pages: https://www.uffizi.it/ https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/ https://www.museodelprado.es/
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art — Hokusai’s Great Wave
- Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum — The theft
