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60 free Arts and Literature trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
48 free arts and literature trivia questions with answers. The classic Trivial Pursuit brown wedge, rebuilt with sources. This arts and literature quiz splits its time between the gallery and the library: the Mona Lisa's theft, the asylum window behind The Starry Night, Michelangelo's David and ceiling, Rodin's Thinker, Warhol's Factory and Banksy's Bristol roots on one side; Don Quixote, Moby-Dick, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Ulysses, Hamlet, the Iliad, the Divine Comedy, Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales on the other, plus the prizes that crown them. The easy questions ask who painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling and who wrote Pride and Prejudice. The hard ones want the Dutch word for a painting like Girl with a Pearl Earring, the year Munch's Scream was created, the whaleship whose sinking ended Moby-Dick, the day on which all of Ulysses takes place and the first winner of the Booker Prize. Built for pub quizzes, book clubs, museum trips and anyone who wants the brown wedge every time. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the works, artists and authors, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
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Q 01The Mona Lisa is painted on what surface?
A poplar panel
King Francis I acquired it after Leonardo's death and it has hung in the Louvre since 1797.
Q 02Who stole the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911?
Vincenzo Peruggia
The Italian claimed patriotism; the theft made the painting world-famous.
Q 03The Starry Night depicts the view from Van Gogh's window at what kind of institution?
An asylum
He admitted himself to Saint-Paul-de-Mausole in May 1889 and added the village from imagination.
Q 04Girl with a Pearl Earring is an example of a 'tronie'. What is that?
A head study, not a portrait
Vermeer's painting has hung in the Mauritshuis in The Hague since 1902.
Q 05Edvard Munch made how many versions of The Scream in paint and pastel?
Four
Two are painted and two are pastel, plus a lithograph; both painted versions have been stolen and recovered.
Q 06In which year did Munch create The Scream?
1893
He recalled a sunset walk when the clouds turned blood red.
Q 07Picasso's Guernica responded to the bombing of a town in which region of Spain?
The Basque Country
German and Italian planes attacked on 26 April 1937; the painting hangs in the Reina Sofía in Madrid.
Q 08What image did Dalí's The Persistence of Memory introduce?
The soft melting pocket watch
It sold for $250 in 1932 and was given to MoMA two years later.
Q 09How tall is Michelangelo's David?
5.17 metres
It was the first colossal marble statue since antiquity and moved indoors to the Accademia in 1873.
Q 10Rodin's The Thinker was originally conceived as part of which larger work?
The Gates of Hell
It was first called The Poet, representing Dante above the doorway.
Q 11Which pope commissioned Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling?
Julius II
The work took from 1508 to 1512 and centres on nine scenes from Genesis.
Q 12Leonardo's Last Supper is painted on the wall of what kind of room?
A refectory
It covers an end wall of the dining hall at Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan.
Q 13Frida Kahlo's family home, now her museum, is known by what name?
La Casa Azul
It stands in Coyoacán; a bus accident at 18 caused her lifelong pain.
Q 14Banksy's work grew out of the underground scene in which English city?
Q 21Who is Don Quixote's squire?
Sancho Panza
The farm labourer brings earthy wit to his master's chivalric fantasies.
Q 22Tolstoy's War and Peace is set during which conflict?
The Napoleonic Wars
It was serialised from 1865, then rewritten and published whole in 1869.
Q 23What is the name of Captain Ahab's ship in Moby-Dick?
Pequod
The ending was based on the real sinking of the whaleship Essex in 1820.
Q 24Melville's white whale was modelled on a real albino whale called what?
Bristol
He started in the early 1990s with the DryBreadZ Crew and has never confirmed his identity.
Q 15Andy Warhol was born to immigrant parents in which city?
Pittsburgh
He worked as a commercial artist before the soup cans and the Factory.
Q 16Jackson Pollock is famous for what painting method?
The drip technique
He poured household paint onto canvases laid flat; he died in a car crash in 1956.
Q 17The term Impressionism comes from the title of a painting by whom?
Claude Monet
Impression, Sunrise was shown at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874.
Q 18Roughly how many artworks did Van Gogh make in his decade as an artist?
2,100
About 860 were oil paintings, most from his last two years.
Q 19Which Jane Austen novel, published in 1813, follows Elizabeth Bennet?
Pride and Prejudice
She wrote it aged 20 to 21; it was her second novel to be printed.
Q 20Don Quixote was published in two parts in which years?
1605 and 1615
It is often called the first modern novel.
Mocha Dick
The novel's opening line, 'Call me Ishmael', is among the most famous in literature.
Q 25In Nineteen Eighty-Four, what has Great Britain been renamed?
Airstrip One
It is a province of the superstate Oceania, ruled by Big Brother.
Q 26Nineteen Eighty-Four was published in which year?
1949
It was Orwell's ninth and final completed book.
Q 27To Kill a Mockingbird won which award a year after its 1960 publication?
The Pulitzer
Atticus Finch became a model of integrity for lawyers.
Q 28Who narrates The Great Gatsby?
Nick Carraway
Fitzgerald drew on his romance with Ginevra King and Long Island parties of 1922.
Q 29Which is Shakespeare's longest play?
Hamlet
It was written between 1599 and 1601 and set at Elsinore in Denmark.
Q 30Shakespeare's surviving works include roughly how many plays?
39
Plus 154 sonnets and three long narrative poems.