The works that shaped how we look at everything since. Ten questions across canvases and bookshelves, each with the context that makes it stick.
There is a small set of paintings and novels that turn up everywhere, quoted, parodied and referenced by people who have never seen or read them. This quiz covers that common ground: the ceiling everyone recognises, the opening line everyone can finish, the movements that changed what art was permitted to do. The questions stay on the works themselves rather than on dates and schools of criticism. The explanations add the reason each one mattered, so a famous name becomes a person who made a decision that other people then had to answer.
Every question in this quiz is listed below with its correct answer and the reasoning behind it. Play first if you would rather not see the answers — or read through as a study sheet.
Play it insteadAnswer: D. Michelangelo
Why: Michelangelo painted it between 1508 and 1512 for Pope Julius II. He considered himself a sculptor rather than a painter and took the commission reluctantly.
Answer: B. Moby-Dick
Why: It opens Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, published in 1851. The novel sold poorly in his lifetime and was only reassessed as a masterpiece decades after his death.
Answer: C. Pablo Picasso
Why: Picasso and Braque developed Cubism together from around 1907, breaking objects into planes seen from several angles at once. They worked so closely that some canvases from the period are hard to attribute.
Answer: D. Vincent van Gogh
Why: Van Gogh painted it in 1889 from a room at the asylum in Saint-Remy-de-Provence. The view is from his window, with the village largely added from imagination.
Answer: A. Leo Tolstoy
Why: Tolstoy published it in instalments between 1865 and 1869. He disputed that it was a novel at all, considering it something closer to a history with characters.
Answer: D. The Louvre
Why: It has been in the Louvre in Paris since the French Revolution. Its global fame grew sharply after it was stolen in 1911 and recovered two years later.
Answer: C. Surrealism
Why: Surrealism drew on dreams and the unconscious, and Dali became its most recognisable figure. He was eventually expelled from the group over politics and commercial work.
Answer: B. Jane Austen
Why: Austen published it in 1813, initially anonymously, credited only to "the author of Sense and Sensibility". Women novelists of the period frequently published without their names.
Answer: B. Mexico
Why: Kahlo painted mostly in Mexico City, drawing on Mexican folk traditions and her own life. A large share of her output is self-portraits.
Answer: B. William Shakespeare
Why: Shakespeare wrote it around 1600. At roughly four thousand lines it is his longest play, and the title role is among the longest in English theatre.
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