70 Fun Facts About Art and Literature

The Mona Lisa is painted on what surface?

The sitter is traditionally identified as the Florentine noblewoman Lisa del Giocondo.

Who stole the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911, claiming it belonged in Italy?

The two-year theft made the painting world famous; it was recovered in 1914.

Van Gogh painted The Starry Night in June 1889 from the window of what?

The village below the swirling sky is imaginary; the painting has hung at MoMA in New York since 1941.

How many versions of The Scream did Edvard Munch create, in paint and pastel?

Both painted versions have been stolen from museums and recovered; a pastel sold for a record price in 2012.

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Vermeer is what kind of painting, in Dutch 17th-century terms?

It has been in the Mauritshuis in The Hague since 1902 and got its current title only in the late 20th century.

Dalí's The Persistence of Memory sold for how much when first exhibited in 1932?

An anonymous donor gave it to MoMA two years later, where it has stayed ever since.

Picasso's Guernica, painted in 1937, uses which colours?

The 3.5-metre-tall canvas hangs in the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid and shows a gored horse, a bull and screaming figures.

Leonardo's The Last Supper is a mural in the refectory of a convent in which city?

It captures the moment after Jesus announces that one of the apostles will betray him.

Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling between 1508 and 1512 at the commission of which pope?

The chapel itself is named for Sixtus IV, who built it in the 1470s.

Michelangelo's David stands how tall?

It was the first colossal marble statue since antiquity and was originally meant for the roofline of Florence Cathedral.

In Botticelli's The Birth of Venus, the goddess arrives at the shore standing on what?

The painting hangs in the Uffizi in Florence and dates from the mid-1480s.

Rembrandt's The Night Watch was trimmed on all four sides in 1715. Why?

Its real title is Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq; it is not even a night scene.

The two figures in Grant Wood's American Gothic were modelled on his sister and whom?

The house behind them is a real Carpenter Gothic cottage in Eldon, Iowa.

Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa is the first print in which series?

The series' use of imported Prussian blue revolutionised Japanese printmaking.

Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans consists of how many paintings, one for each variety?

They were first shown at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles in July 1962.

Klimt's The Kiss, from his Golden Period, includes which materials besides oil paint?

It hangs in the Belvedere in Vienna and was first exhibited in 1908 as Liebespaar, the lovers.

Edward Hopper's Nighthawks shows four people late at night in what setting?

The 1942 painting was sold to the Art Institute of Chicago within months of completion.

The painting popularly called Whistler's Mother is officially titled what?

The French state bought it in 1891 and it now hangs in the Musée d'Orsay.

Rodin's The Thinker was originally conceived as part of which larger commission?

It was first called The Poet and was meant to represent Dante contemplating his Divine Comedy.

The Venus de Milo was discovered in 1820 on which Greek island?

The Parian marble statue has been in the Louvre since 1821 and is missing both arms.

Velázquez's Las Meninas, one of the most analysed paintings in Western art, hangs in which museum?

Its title means 'The Ladies-in-waiting'; Velázquez painted it in 1656 for the court of Philip IV.

Which Monet painting of the port of Le Havre gave the Impressionist movement its name?

Critic Louis Leroy used the title mockingly in Le Charivari after the 1874 exhibition, and the name stuck.

Leonardo's Vitruvian Man, drawn around 1490, shows a man inscribed within which two shapes?

It was inspired by the Roman architect Vitruvius's ideas on human proportion.

A 1978 theory holds the skeletal figure in The Scream was inspired by what, seen at the 1889 Paris Exposition?

Gauguin may have seen the same mummy; Munch first exhibited the work under the German title The Scream of Nature.

Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice at what age?

It was her third novel written but only the second published, appearing in 1813.

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Great Britain has been renamed what?

It is a province of the superstate Oceania; the book was Orwell's ninth and final completed work.

In Moby-Dick, what is the name of Captain Ahab's whaling ship?

The novel was a commercial failure in Melville's lifetime and only later became a classic.

Don Quixote's real name, before he decides to become a knight-errant, is what?

Cervantes published the two parts in 1605 and 1615; it is often called the first modern novel.

Tolstoy's War and Peace is set during which conflict?

An early version was serialised from 1865 before Tolstoy rewrote the whole thing.

Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird won which award a year after its 1960 publication?

Lee grew up in Monroeville, Alabama, where her childhood friend was Truman Capote.

Who narrates The Great Gatsby?

Fitzgerald considered titles including Trimalchio and Among Ash Heaps and Millionaires before settling on The Great Gatsby.

García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude follows the Buendía family in which fictional town?

The 1967 novel is often called the greatest work of Latin American literature.

Mary Shelley began Frankenstein after a challenge to write a ghost story issued in 1816 by whom?

She was 18 when she started and 20 when it appeared anonymously in January 1818.

Bram Stoker's Dracula is told entirely through what?

The count sails to England and plagues the seaside town of Whitby.

Homer's Odyssey follows Odysseus's journey home to which island kingdom?

Like the Iliad it is divided into 24 books, and the Latin form of the hero's name is Ulysses.

In Dante's Divine Comedy, who guides the poet through Hell and most of Purgatory?

Virgil stands for human reason; Beatrice, representing divine revelation, takes over in Paradise.

James Joyce's Ulysses takes place over a single day, now celebrated as Bloomsday. What is the date?

The book was published in Paris by Sylvia Beach on Joyce's 40th birthday.

Charlotte Brontë published Jane Eyre in 1847 under which pen name?

Her sisters Emily and Anne published as Ellis and Acton Bell the same year.

Orwell's Animal Farm was originally subtitled what?

It allegorises the Russian Revolution and Stalin's rise, and was written while Britain was allied with the USSR.

The title Fahrenheit 451 refers to what?

Bradbury asked a fire department what temperature paper ignites at and used the answer he was given.

In Lord of the Flies, what object do the boys use to call meetings and grant the right to speak?

The 1954 novel was William Golding's debut.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was conceived on an 1862 boat trip with whose daughters?

The middle daughter, Alice Liddell, gave the heroine her name; Tenniel drew the 42 original illustrations.

Beowulf, the Old English epic, consists of roughly how many alliterative lines?

The only surviving manuscript, the Nowell Codex, was written between about 975 and 1025.

Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are told by pilgrims travelling to the shrine of which saint?

The 24 tales, mostly in verse, were written in Middle English between 1387 and 1400.

In Kafka's The Metamorphosis, salesman Gregor Samsa wakes to find he has become what?

Kafka's German phrase is ungeheueres Ungeziefer, monstrous vermin; he never specifies the species.

Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart takes its title from a 1919 poem by whom?

The line is from 'The Second Coming'; the 1958 novel follows Okonkwo of the fictional Igbo clan of Umuofia.

The Little Prince was first published in 1943 in which country?

Saint-Exupéry was a pilot as well as a writer; the prince comes from the house-sized asteroid B-612.

Sherlock Holmes first appeared in print in 1887 in which story?

His fame took off with the Strand Magazine short stories starting in 1891.

Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap holds what record?

Christie is also the most-translated individual author, and And Then There Were None has sold about 100 million copies.

Who won the first Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1901?

The French poet beat Tolstoy, a snub critics still argue about; the prize honours a body of work, not a single book.

The Booker Prize is awarded for a novel written in English and published where?

The winner receives £50,000; it was the Man Booker Prize from 2002 to 2019.

A traditional Japanese haiku has 17 sound units arranged in what pattern?

It also traditionally includes a kigo, a seasonal reference, and a kireji, a cutting word.

A sonnet traditionally has how many lines?

The form originated in 13th-century Sicily; the word means 'little song'.

Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment was first published in 1866 in what form?

It was his second full-length novel after returning from ten years of Siberian exile.

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, published in 1932, is largely set in what?

Its citizens are engineered into castes and conditioned from birth.

J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye was published as a novel in which year?

Parts had appeared in serial form in 1945 and 1946, and it was originally aimed at adults.

Which is Shakespeare's longest play?

Three early versions survive, the First Quarto of 1603, the Second Quarto of 1604 and the First Folio of 1623, each with lines the others lack.

What is the name of the ageing fisherman in Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea?

Hemingway wrote the 26,531-word novella in Cuba in about six weeks, working up to a thousand words a day.

Which Early Netherlandish master painted the triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights?

He was between 40 and 60 when he painted it, and its closed outer panels show the Third Day of Creation.

George Eliot, author of Middlemarch, was the pen name of which writer?

The novel appeared in eight paperbound instalments from December 1871 to December 1872.

Van Gogh painted his Arles Sunflowers to decorate a guest room for which fellow artist?

Gauguin had already acquired two of the earlier Paris versions, which showed the flowers lying on the ground.

Under which pen name did Emily Brontë publish Wuthering Heights in 1847?

Publisher Thomas Newby accepted it alongside Anne's Agnes Grey, but Charlotte's Jane Eyre reached print first.

Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People commemorates which uprising?

The revolt toppled Charles X and restored the tricolour as France's flag; the painting is often mistaken for a scene of 1789.

Marcel Duchamp's 1917 readymade Fountain, a porcelain urinal, was signed with what name?

Submitted to the Society of Independent Artists' first show, it could not be rejected but was never displayed.

Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon depicts a brothel on a street in which city?

Carrer d'Avinyó gives the 1907 painting its misleading title; the work hangs in New York's Museum of Modern Art.

In what medium did Andrew Wyeth paint Christina's World in 1948?

The woman is Anna Christina Olson, who refused a wheelchair and crawled across her fields despite a muscular disorder.

The shorter first version of The Picture of Dorian Gray appeared in 1890 in which US periodical?

The full novel-length version, Wilde's only novel, followed in April 1891.

How many books did the first 1667 edition of Milton's Paradise Lost contain?

The 1674 second edition rearranged it into twelve, in the manner of Virgil's Aeneid.

Anna Karenina was serialised from 1875 to 1877 in which periodical?

Tolstoy had come to hate the book by the final instalments and finished it unwillingly, yet called it his first true novel.

Which daughter of a famous political theorist translated Madame Bovary into English in 1886?

Flaubert had been prosecuted for obscenity over the 1856 serialisation and acquitted in February 1857.