Art and Literature Trivia
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70 free Art and Literature trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
56 free art and literature trivia questions with answers. These art and literature trivia questions are the classic Trivial Pursuit brown-wedge round, done properly. Half the quiz is art: the Mona Lisa's theft, what The Starry Night looks out on, why The Night Watch was trimmed, who posed for American Gothic, how many soup cans Warhol painted, what The Thinker was thinking about and where the Venus de Milo was dug up. The other half is literature: Ahab's ship, Airstrip One, Macondo, the conch, Bloomsday, the ghost-story bet that produced Frankenstein, the pen names of the Brontës, and the first Nobel laureate who beat Tolstoy. The questions range from ones any reader or gallery-goer will get to ones that need a good memory for dates and titles. It works as a stand-alone round for a pub quiz, a school or book-club warm-up, or a test of your own general culture. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and museum or publisher records, and each question shows its citation once you have answered.
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Q 01The Mona Lisa is painted on what surface?
A white poplar panel
Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa in oil on a white poplar panel about 77 by 53 cm, the usual support in Italy before canvas took over.
Q 02Who stole the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911, claiming it belonged in Italy?
Vincenzo Peruggia
Vincenzo Peruggia, a Louvre handyman, hid the painting in his Paris flat for two years and was caught in Florence in December 1913 trying to sell it.
Q 03Van Gogh painted The Starry Night in June 1889 from the window of what?
His asylum room at Saint-Rémy
Van Gogh painted the view from his asylum room at Saint-Rémy, the east-facing window of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole; the canvas has hung at MoMA in New York since 1941.
Q 04How many versions of The Scream did Edvard Munch create, in paint and pastel?
Four
Munch made four versions: two painted, in 1893 and 1910, and two in pastel, from 1893 and 1895; the 1895 pastel sold for nearly $120 million in 2012.
Q 05Girl with a Pearl Earring by Vermeer is what kind of painting, in Dutch 17th-century terms?
A tronie, a study of a head
Vermeer's picture is a tronie, a study of a head in exotic costume rather than a portrait of a named sitter; it has been in the Mauritshuis since 1902.
Q 06Dalí's The Persistence of Memory sold for how much when first exhibited in 1932?
$250
Dealer Julien Levy bought The Persistence of Memory for $250 and showed it in New York in 1932; an anonymous donor gave it to MoMA in 1934.
Q 07Picasso's Guernica, painted in 1937, uses which colours?
Grey, black and white only
Picasso worked in grey, black and white only, a newsprint-like palette for the bombing; the 3.5-metre-tall canvas hangs in Madrid's Museo Reina Sofía.
Q 08Leonardo's The Last Supper is a mural in the refectory of a convent in which city?
Milan
The mural covers a wall of the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, capturing the moment after Jesus says one apostle will betray him.
Q 09Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling between 1508 and 1512 at the commission of which pope?
Julius II
Pope Julius II, Sixtus IV's nephew, commissioned the ceiling in 1508; the chapel itself is named for Sixtus, who built it in the 1470s.
Q 10Michelangelo's David stands how tall?
5.17 metres (17 feet)
David stands 5.17 metres (17 feet) tall; carved from a single block of Carrara marble, it was originally meant for a buttress of Florence Cathedral.
Q 11In Botticelli's The Birth of Venus, the goddess arrives at the shore standing on what?
A giant scallop shell
Venus stands on a giant scallop shell blown ashore by Zephyr; the mid-1480s painting hangs in the Uffizi in Florence.
Q 12Why was Rembrandt's The Night Watch trimmed on every side in 1715?
To fit a wall in Amsterdam Town Hall
The canvas was cut down to fit a wall in Amsterdam Town Hall, between two doors; the biggest loss was a strip on the left with two figures.
Q 13The two figures in Grant Wood's American Gothic were modelled on his sister and whom?
The family dentist
Q 21Velázquez's Las Meninas, one of the most analysed paintings in Western art, hangs in which museum?
The Prado, Madrid
Las Meninas has been in The Prado, Madrid since the museum opened in 1819; Velázquez painted it in 1656 for the court of Philip IV.
Q 22Which Monet painting of Le Havre harbour did critic Louis Leroy mock in 1874?
Impression, Sunrise
Leroy's review of Impression, Sunrise sneeringly called the group 'Impressionists', and the label stuck to the whole movement.
Q 23Leonardo's Vitruvian Man, drawn around 1490, shows a man inscribed within which two shapes?
A circle and a square
Wood posed his sister Nan and the family dentist, Byron McKeeby of Cedar Rapids, in front of a real Carpenter Gothic cottage in Eldon, Iowa.
Q 14Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa is the first print in which series?
Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji
The Great Wave opens Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, published around 1831, a series whose use of imported Prussian blue revolutionised Japanese printmaking.
Q 15Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans consists of how many paintings, one for each variety?
32
The 32 canvases, one per Campbell's variety sold in 1962, were first shown at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles in July 1962.
Q 16Klimt's The Kiss, from his Golden Period, includes which materials besides oil paint?
Gold leaf, silver and platinum
Klimt added gold leaf, silver and platinum to the oil paint; the canvas was first shown in 1908 as Liebespaar, the lovers, and hangs in Vienna's Belvedere.
Q 17Edward Hopper's Nighthawks shows four people late at night in what setting?
A downtown diner
Hopper set Nighthawks in a downtown diner on a Greenwich Village corner, as he put it; the Art Institute of Chicago bought the 1942 canvas within months.
Q 18The painting popularly called Whistler's Mother is officially titled what?
Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1
Whistler titled it Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 to stress form over sentiment; the French state bought it in 1891, and it hangs in the Musée d'Orsay.
Q 19Rodin's The Thinker was originally conceived as part of which larger commission?
The Gates of Hell
The Thinker was modelled in 1880 to sit atop The Gates of Hell, Rodin's doors for a planned museum; first called The Poet, it represented Dante.
Q 20In 1820 a farmer unearthed the Louvre's famous armless Aphrodite on which Greek island?
Milos
The Venus de Milo takes its name from Milos, where a farmer found it in 1820; the Parian marble statue has been in the Louvre since 1821.
Leonardo fits the figure into a circle and a square at once, following the Roman architect Vitruvius's ideas on ideal human proportion.
Q 24A 1978 theory holds the skeletal figure in The Scream was inspired by what, seen at the 1889 Paris Exposition?
A Peruvian mummy
Art historian Robert Rosenblum suggested in 1978 that a Peruvian mummy shown at the 1889 Exposition inspired the figure; Gauguin may have drawn on the same mummy.
Q 25Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice at what age?
About 21
It was her third novel written but only the second published, appearing in 1813.
Q 26In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Great Britain has been renamed what?
Airstrip One
Airstrip One is a province of the superstate Oceania, ruled from London; Orwell finished the novel in 1948 and it appeared in June 1949, months before he died.
Q 27In Moby-Dick, what is the name of Captain Ahab's whaling ship?
Pequod
The Pequod, named for a Native American people of Connecticut, sails from Nantucket; the 1851 novel sold poorly in Melville's lifetime and only later became a classic.
Q 28Don Quixote's real name, before he decides to become a knight-errant, is what?
Alonso Quijano
The hidalgo Alonso Quijano renames himself Don Quixote de la Mancha; Cervantes published the two parts in 1605 and 1615, and it is often called the first modern novel.
Q 29Tolstoy's War and Peace is set during which conflict?
The Napoleonic Wars
The novel follows Russian families through the Napoleonic Wars, from 1805 to Napoleon's 1812 invasion; an early version was serialised from 1865 before Tolstoy rewrote it.
Q 30Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird won which award a year after its 1960 publication?
The Pulitzer
To Kill a Mockingbird took the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961; Lee grew up in Monroeville, Alabama, where Truman Capote was her childhood friend.