Paintings That Were Cut Into Pieces
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Paintings That Were Cut Into Pieces — Daily trivia Saturday, July 11, 2026: questions and answers
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Q 01Which Caravaggio altarpiece was cut from its frame in Palermo in 1969 and never seen again?
- AThe Calling of Saint Matthew
- BNativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence
- CThe Death of the Virgin
- DJudith Beheading Holofernes
Show answer
Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence
A Mafia informant later claimed the canvas was sold to a Swiss dealer who was told it would be cut into pieces for transport, and the theft is still on the FBI's list of unsolved art crimes.
Q 02What art style, the opposite of collage, is made by tearing or cutting pieces from an existing image?
- ADecollage
- BMonochromatic dissolution
- CAssemblage partition
- DChromatic sectioning
Show answer
Decollage
Wolf Vostell borrowed the word from a 1954 Le Figaro headline about a plane that took off and crashed at the same moment, and it became the name for the lacerated-poster art of Rotella, Villeglé and Hains.
Q 03Which Rembrandt painting was trimmed on all four sides in 1715 to fit between two columns in Amsterdam Town Hall?
- AThe Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp
- BThe Jewish Bride
- CThe Night Watch
- DThe Syndics of the Drapers' Guild
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The Night Watch
The trimmed strips were never found, so in 2021 the Rijksmuseum used an AI trained on a 17th-century copy to recreate the missing edges and hung them beside the original for three months.
Q 04Short of money, Rembrandt cut which rejected city-hall commission down to a quarter of its size to help it sell?
- ABelshazzar's Feast
- BThe Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis
- CThe Return of the Prodigal Son
- DAristotle with a Bust of Homer
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The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis
The surviving fragment ended up in Sweden and hangs in Stockholm's Nationalmuseum, and Rembrandt partly repainted it after the cut to make the smaller composition work.
Q 05Which Banksy painting shredded itself after selling at Sotheby's in 2018 and was renamed "Love Is in the Bin"?
- AFlower Thrower
- BKissing Coppers
- CDevolved Parliament
- DGirl with Balloon
Show answer
Girl with Balloon
The shredder jammed halfway, which Banksy says was unplanned, and the half-destroyed work resold in 2021 for £18.6 million, roughly eighteen times its 2018 price.
Q 06Which fellow painter hunted down and reassembled the sold-off fragments of Manet's The Execution of Emperor Maximilian?
- AEdgar Degas
- BClaude Monet
- CCamille Pissarro
- DPaul Cézanne
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Edgar Degas
London's National Gallery bought the reassembled fragments in 1918, split them up again until 1979, and only mounted them together on a single canvas in 1992.
Q 07What destroyed most of Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson of Dr Deijman in 1723?
- AA flood
- BWoodworm
- CA fire
- DA knife attack
Show answer
A fire
A preparatory sketch shows the full group of surgeons who were lost; what remains, with the corpse seen dramatically foreshortened from the feet, hangs in the Amsterdam Museum.
Q 08What did Monet do to Luncheon on the Grass when he bought it back from his landlord?
- ARepainted it entirely
- BGave it to Manet
- CBurned it in a rage
- DCut it into pieces
Show answer
Cut it into pieces
Years in a damp storeroom had rotted the canvas, so Monet salvaged the sound parts; the two surviving sections now hang in the Musée d'Orsay, and a smaller version is in Moscow's Pushkin Museum.
Q 09Soldiers of which leader cut Veronese's The Wedding at Cana in half and carted it from Venice to Paris in 1797?
- ANapoleon Bonaparte
- BLouis XIV
- CCharles V
- DGiuseppe Garibaldi
Show answer
Napoleon Bonaparte
The canvas measures 6.77 by 9.94 metres and was painted for the monks' refectory on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, which has been without it ever since.
Q 10Which parts of the sitter were lost when Leonardo's Ginevra de' Benci was cut down?
- AHer feet
- BHer shoulders
- CHer hands
- DHer knees
Show answer
Her hands
Washington's National Gallery of Art bought the panel from the Prince of Liechtenstein in 1967 for between $5 and $6 million, then a record for any painting.
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