Q 01/05

Cézanne, Gauguin and Seurat are the leading names of which movement in French painting?

A) Post-Impressionism

B) Abstract Expressionism

C) Cubism

D) Neoclassicism

Answer · why

A) Post-Impressionism

Post-Impressionism got its name from the critic Roger Fry, who titled a 1910 exhibition 'Manet and the Post-Impressionists'; by then Cézanne and Seura...

Q 02/05

Who is credited with painting the famous portrait known as the Mona Lisa?

A) Leonardo da Vinci

B) Michelangelo

C) Titian

D) Sandro Botticelli

Answer · why

A) Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci never handed the portrait to the family it was painted for: he kept it, and it passed to King Francis I, who had invited him to live...

Q 03/05

What painting technique applies pigment to wet lime plaster so the colour sets into the wall as it dries?

A) Gouache

B) Tempera

C) Encaustic

D) Fresco

Answer · why

D) Fresco

Fresco painters race the drying plaster, so they lay only as much as they can paint in a day; each patch is called a giornata, and the seams between d...

Q 04/05

From which semi-precious stone was the costly Renaissance blue pigment ultramarine derived?

A) Azurite

B) Lapis Lazuli

C) Malachite

D) Turquoise

Answer · why

B) Lapis Lazuli

Lapis lazuli came from mines at Sar-i-Sang in Afghanistan, hence the pigment's name, 'beyond the sea'; it could cost as much as gold and was often kep...

Q 05/05

Which court painter to Philip IV put himself at the easel inside his 1656 masterpiece Las Meninas?

A) El Greco

B) Diego Velázquez

C) Francisco de Zurbarán

D) Bartolomé Murillo

Answer · why

B) Diego Velázquez

Diego Velázquez painted himself at the easel in Las Meninas (1656), now in the Prado; the mirror on the back wall seems to reflect Philip IV and Queen...