Q 01/05

What did the hot-tempered painter Caravaggio do in May 1606 that forced him to flee Rome as a fugitive?

A) Killed a man

B) Insulted the pope

C) Forged a painting

D) Robbed a church

Answer · why

A) Killed a man

Caravaggio killed a man, Ranuccio Tomassoni, in a brawl and was sentenced to death. He spent the final four years of his life on the run, still turnin...

Q 02/05

The soaring dome that visitors see inside Rome's church of Sant'Ignazio is really what, made by Andrea Pozzo in 1685?

A) A plaster shell

B) A stained-glass panel

C) A flat painting

D) A carved wooden model

Answer · why

C) A flat painting

A flat painting on canvas fills the spot where the planned dome was never built. A marker in the floor shows visitors where to stand for the trick to ...

Q 03/05

Dutch forger Han van Meegeren became a folk hero for selling a fake Vermeer to which Nazi leader?

A) Joseph Goebbels

B) Hermann Göring

C) Heinrich Himmler

D) Albert Speer

Answer · why

B) Hermann Göring

Hermann Göring traded 137 looted paintings for the forgery. Van Meegeren's confession that he had faked it cleared him of selling a Dutch national tre...

Q 04/05

The word baroque is often traced to the Portuguese barroco, a jeweller's term for an irregular what?

A) Diamond

B) Opal

C) Ruby

D) Pearl

Answer · why

D) Pearl

Pearl is the root: a lumpy, imperfectly round one was called baroque, and critics later borrowed the word for art they found bizarre and overdone.

Q 05/05

In Bernini's marble Apollo and Daphne, the fleeing nymph is caught at the moment she turns into what?

A) A laurel tree

B) A white swan

C) A flowing stream

D) A bed of reeds

Answer · why

A) A laurel tree

A laurel tree is what Daphne becomes to escape the god, and Bernini shows twigs and leaves already springing from her hands, just as Ovid's Metamorpho...