70 Fun Facts About Art and Literature

The Mona Lisa is painted on what surface?

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Michelangelo's David stands how tall?

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.

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

Venus stands on a giant scallop shell blown ashore by Zephyr; the mid-1480s painting hangs in the Uffizi in Florence.

Why was Rembrandt's The Night Watch trimmed on every side in 1715?

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.

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

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.

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

The Great Wave opens Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, published around 1831, a series whose use of imported Prussian blue revolutionised Japanese printmaking.

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

The 32 canvases, one per Campbell's variety sold in 1962, 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?

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

In 1820 a farmer unearthed the Louvre's famous armless Aphrodite on which Greek island?

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.

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

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.

Which Monet painting of Le Havre harbour did critic Louis Leroy mock in 1874?

Leroy's review of Impression, Sunrise sneeringly called the group 'Impressionists', and the label stuck to the whole movement.

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

Leonardo fits the figure into a circle and a square at once, following the Roman architect Vitruvius's ideas on ideal human proportion.

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

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Who narrates The Great Gatsby?

Nick Carraway, Gatsby's neighbour and Daisy's cousin, tells the story; Fitzgerald weighed titles like 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?

Macondo, the town the Buendías found in the jungle, was inspired by Aracataca, the author's Colombian birthplace; the novel appeared in 1967.

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

Lord Byron set the ghost-story contest at Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva in June 1816; Shelley was 18 when she began and 20 when it appeared anonymously in January 1818.

Bram Stoker's Dracula is told entirely through what?

Stoker tells the story through documents: letters, diaries and newspaper cuttings, along with a ship's log and phonograph records; the count lands at the seaside town of Whitby.

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

Odysseus spends a decade returning to Ithaca, where Penelope holds off her suitors; like the Iliad the poem has 24 books, and the hero's Latin 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.

On which date does James Joyce's Ulysses, celebrated yearly as Bloomsday, take place?

Ulysses unfolds on 16 June 1904, the day Joyce first went out with Nora Barnacle; Sylvia Beach published it in Paris on his 40th birthday in 1922.

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

Charlotte wrote as Currer Bell, keeping her own initials, so the book would be judged without the prejudice she felt met women authors; Jane Eyre appeared in October 1847.

Orwell's Animal Farm was originally subtitled what?

The 1945 book was subtitled A Fairy Story; 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 presented 451°F as the temperature at which book paper catches fire, a figure he said he got by asking a fire department.

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

Ralph blows a conch shell to summon the scattered boys, and whoever holds it may speak at assemblies; the 1954 novel was William Golding's debut.

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

Dean Henry Liddell's three daughters were on the Thames outing of 4 July 1862; the middle one, Alice Liddell, gave the heroine her name, and Tenniel drew the 42 illustrations.

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

Beowulf runs to 3,182 lines, roughly 3,200, in Old English alliterative verse; the only manuscript, the Nowell Codex, dates from about 975 to 1025.

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

The pilgrims ride to Canterbury Cathedral's shrine of Thomas Becket, the archbishop murdered there in 1170; the 24 tales were written between 1387 and 1400.

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

Gregor wakes as a huge insect, in Kafka's words 'zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer', monstrous vermin; he never names the species, and his family shuns him.

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

W. B. Yeats's 'The Second Coming' supplies the line 'Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold'; Achebe's 1958 novel follows Okonkwo of the Igbo clan of Umuofia.

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

Saint-Exupéry wrote it in exile in New York, and Reynal & Hitchcock issued it in the United States in April 1943, in English and French; France saw it only after the war.

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

A Study in Scarlet appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887; Holmes's fame took off with the Strand Magazine short stories from 1891.

Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap holds what record?

The Mousetrap is the longest-running play anywhere, on the London stage continuously since its 1952 opening apart from the 2020 pandemic pause.

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

Sully Prudhomme, a French poet, took the first literature Nobel in 1901; Swedish writers protested that Tolstoy deserved it, and the prize honours a body of work, not one book.

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

Since 2014 any novel written in English is eligible as long as it is published in the United Kingdom or Ireland; the £50,000 prize was the Man Booker from 2002 to 2019.

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

The 17 on, or sound units, fall as 5, 7, 5 across three phrases; a haiku also traditionally includes a kigo, a seasonal reference, and a kireji, a cutting word.

A sonnet traditionally has how many lines?

A sonnet has 14 lines, usually in iambic pentameter; the form arose in 13th-century Sicily, and the name means 'little song'.

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

The novel ran as twelve monthly instalments in a journal during 1866 before appearing as a book the next year; Dostoevsky wrote it under heavy debt after his Siberian years.

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

The story unfolds in a futuristic global State, the World State of AF 632, roughly 2540 AD, whose 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?

Little, Brown published the novel on 16 July 1951; parts had appeared as stories in 1945 and 1946, and Salinger aimed it at adults.

Which is Shakespeare's longest play?

Hamlet runs to about 30,000 words, more than 4,000 lines in the conflated text; three early versions survive, the 1603 and 1604 Quartos and the 1623 Folio.

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

Santiago, the old Cuban fisherman, battles a giant marlin for three days; Hemingway wrote the novella in Cuba and published it in Life magazine in September 1952.

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

Hieronymus Bosch painted the triptych around 1490 to 1510; its closed outer panels show the Third Day of Creation in grisaille, and they open onto Eden, a garden of pleasures and Hell.

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

Mary Ann Evans took the male pen name George Eliot so her fiction would be taken seriously; Middlemarch appeared in eight instalments from December 1871 to December 1872.

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

Van Gogh painted the Arles Sunflowers in August 1888 to hang in the Yellow House room awaiting Paul Gauguin, who arrived that October and already owned two earlier Paris sunflower studies.

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

Emily signed the novel Ellis Bell; publisher Thomas Newby issued it in December 1847 alongside Anne's Agnes Grey, two months after Jane Eyre reached print.

Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People commemorates which uprising?

Delacroix painted the July Revolution of 1830, the three days that toppled Charles X and restored the tricolour; the scene is often mistaken for 1789.

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

Duchamp signed the urinal 'R. Mutt 1917' and submitted it to the Society of Independent Artists' first show, where it could not be rejected but was hidden from view.

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?

Wyeth worked in egg tempera on gessoed panel; the woman is Anna Christina Olson, who refused a wheelchair and crawled across her Maine fields despite a muscular disorder.

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

The 13-chapter version ran in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in July 1890; Wilde expanded it to 20 chapters for the April 1891 book, his only novel.

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

The 1667 edition ran to ten books; Milton's 1674 second edition split two of them to make twelve, matching the Aeneid's epic structure.

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

Mikhail Katkov's The Russian Messenger carried the novel from 1875, but refused the final part over Tolstoy's anti-war views, so Part 8 appeared separately in 1877.

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

Eleanor Marx, Karl Marx's youngest daughter, produced the first English Madame Bovary in 1886; Flaubert had been tried for obscenity over the 1856 serialisation and acquitted in February 1857.