Free quiz · 8 questions · Medium to Boss
Famous paintings quiz
How well do you really know Famous paintings? These 8 questions start easy and end with a Boss round. There are no multiple choice options: you type what you know, and every answer is checked against the key facts.
60 seconds a question, one 2x boost, and a leaderboard. Playing with friends writes a fresh set of Famous paintings questions for your group.
The questions
- Medium
Who painted The Starry Night, and in what year did he paint it?
Show the answer
- Vincent van Gogh
- 1889
- Oil on canvas
- Medium
A huge painting protested the bombing of a Spanish town: who painted it, and what was the town called?
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- Pablo Picasso
- Guernica
- The bombing took place during the Spanish Civil War
- Medium
Who painted Girl with a Pearl Earring, and what two colors are prominent in the headscarf?
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- Johannes Vermeer
- Blue
- Yellow
- Medium
In Georges Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, what technique builds the scene, and how do its marks create blended colors?
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- The technique is pointillism, also called divisionism
- The image is built from tiny dots or dabs of color
- The colors appear to blend optically when viewed together
- Medium
In The Persistence of Memory, who painted the scene, what do the clocks look like, and what kind of landscape lies behind them?
Show the answer
- Salvador Dalí painted it.
- The clocks appear soft, drooping, or melting.
- The background is a barren coastal landscape.
- Hard
The Great Wave off Kanagawa became a global art icon: who created it, and what Japanese print tradition does it belong to?
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- Katsushika Hokusai created it
- It belongs to the ukiyo-e tradition
- It is a woodblock print
- Hard
On the porch in American Gothic, what tool does the man hold, and who posed as the woman beside him?
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- He holds a pitchfork.
- The woman was Grant Wood’s sister, Nan Wood Graham.
- The man was modeled by Wood’s dentist, Byron McKeeby.
- Boss
In Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait, what kind of mirror hangs behind the couple, and what does its reflection reveal?
Show the answer
- It is a convex mirror
- It reflects the room behind the couple
- It shows the couple and other figures in the room
How scoring works
- Each question has 2 or 3 key facts. Each one earns full, half or no credit, so a wrong answer scores zero.
- Later questions are worth more, fast answers earn a bonus, and great answers in a row build a streak.
- A famous myth or a clear factual error halves the points.
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