Painting by Numbers Trivia Quiz

Answer: Leonardo da Vinci

Da Vinci (1452-1519) is admired today as the ideal Renaissance man: painter and sculptor, inventor and anatomist, dabbler in all the arts and sciences known in his day. The "Mona Lisa" is his best-known work. An unknown, dark-haired woman -- perhaps Milady, or Mona, Lisa, wife of the silk merchant Francesco Giocondo -- sits serenely on a balcony, her hands clasped on her lap.

A faint smile plays about her eyes and lips. Behind her is a green and ochre landscape, in which we can see steep cliffs, a curved mountain road, and an arched bridge spanning a river.

This groundbreaking work spawned countless imitators, but in the end, "Mona Lisa" sits alone.

Answer: The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel

The Sistine Chapel is an enormous room in the Pope's palace in the Vatican City. It was built in its current form by Pope Sixtus IV, for whom it was named, but it is best known for its artistic additions under Pope Julius II -- namely the magnificent ceiling painted by Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) between 1508 and 1512.

He filled the nearly six thousand square feet with prophets, apostles, and Bible scenes, cunningly using the vaults of the ceiling to help him subdivide the "canvas." The result of his long and uncomfortable labor is truly stunning, and leads to debilitating "tourist's neck" among visitors to Rome.

Answer: St. John the Baptist

St. John the Baptist, a cousin of Jesus, is famous in the Bible for his adult work -- performing baptisms in the Jordan River -- and for his gruesome martyrdom. But he is also known for a remarkably precocious act of faith: when the pregnant Virgin Mary visited his pregnant mother, St. John "leapt for joy" in the womb, so delighted was he by the presence of Christ (Luke 1:44).

By the late fifteenth century, it had become fashionable to include him in depictions of holy maternal bliss -- perhaps in deference to the sweet tradition that, while Jesus and His family were in exile in Egypt, the young St. John was flown there by angels so that he could play with his divine cousin. He is often shown carrying a thin cross, made from river reeds, and that is how Raphael Sanzio (1483-1520) painted him in the bright, tender "Madonna of the Chair."

Answer: Each "head" is really an arrangement of plants representing the season of the year.

Arcimboldo's (1527-1593) fantastic imagery continued to inspire artists centuries later: a 1987 exhibition in Venice, showcasing work by 20th-century Surrealist artists, was titled "The Arcimboldo Effect." His famous series "The Four Seasons" makes it obvious why he has been so well remembered. For each season, Arcimboldo used cleverly arranged plants to pick out the shapes and colors of a man's face. "Spring"'s face is made of flowers, with cheeks that are literally roses; his neck is hidden by a ruff of daisies, and his doublet is made of dandelion and lettuce leaves.

The face of "Summer" is one of cherries, squash, plums and corn; "Autumn" draws his features from apples, potatoes, grapes and gourds. Even "Winter" -- balding on top where the tree that forms his face has lost its leaves -- fastens his collar with a pair of citrus fruits.

Answer: Rembrandt van Rijn

The Parable of the Prodigal Son, recounted by Jesus in Luke 15:11-32, tells of a younger son who demands his inheritance in advance, squanders it on high living in a distant place, and becomes destitute. The penitent man returns to his father's household intending to beg a place as a servant, but his father welcomes him back with a feast of thanksgiving.

Rembrandt (1606-1669) was one of many painters to mine this tale for artistic effect. The story lends itself to his expressive style, both in the riotous tavern scene and in the deep, scarcely-contained emotion of the Prodigal Son's return.

Answer: Vincent Van Gogh

Van Gogh (1853-1890) spent a little over a year in Arles, in the south of France, and produced a number of beautiful works there. Among the night cafés and the sunflowers, he decided to paint his bedroom, a simple and colorful refuge from a turbulent mind. The room was not a rectangular shape, which gives the paintings an odd, off-balance quality.

Although the three "Bedroom in Arles" pictures are very similar, there are differences -- especially in the six pictures on the wall. Most of these are not painted in enough detail to tell much about them, but a few are recognizable. For example, the bedroom in Version 1 (now at Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum) sports its creator's portraits of Eugène Boch (a poet) and Paul-Eugène Milliet (a soldier). The third-version bedroom, now at the Musée d'Orsay, displays a painting that looks very like one of Van Gogh's known self-portraits.

Answer: The Persistence of Memory

Dalí (1904-1989) was a Spanish painter, from Catalonia, who publicized the Surrealist movement partly through his striking paintings and partly through his eccentric behavior. Several of his works feature "soft" objects, which bend and melt in ways the actual, solid forms could never do; the four soft watches in 1931's "The Persistence of Memory," folded and flowing over the surfaces, are the most famous examples.

Answer: The bombing of the town of Guernica by German and Italian planes

Guernica is a town in the northeast corner of Spain, in the Basque country. It was mostly isolated from the fighting of the Spanish Civil War until April 26, 1937, when it was bombed by fascist forces allied with Francisco Franco. The town had stood between Franco's armies and the great city of Bilbao; afterward, it lay in ruins, with hundreds dead.

The atrocity prompted international outrage; many, like Picasso (1881-1973) were moved to speak out against the horrors of war. The immense "Guernica," 3.5 meters by 7.8 meters, is a study of pain, fear, grief and desolation in stark blacks and grays.

Answer: Jacob Lawrence

Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) came of age during the Harlem Renaissance. He was still a young man in 1940 and 1941 when he painted his "Migration of the Negro" series, which poignantly tells the story of how, over the course of twenty years, over a million African-Americans left the farms and plantations of the American South for the cities of the North.

The paintings trace this history: from famine and violence in the South, to the trials of the long journey, to isolation and violence in the North -- the migrants were often unwittingly brought in as strikebreakers. Lawrence, who called himself a "dynamic cubist," used bright colors and simple shapes to convey astonishing depths of emotion.

Answer: Campbell's Soup cans

Warhol (1928-1987) owed his fifteen minutes of fame to the Pop Art movement, which sought to blur the boundaries between high art and everyday life. In a diverse assortment of works, Warhol took ordinary objects out of context, elevating their images to high art by painting or printing them in unexpected ways; repetition was a primary tool. His series of Campbell's Soup pictures exemplifies this ideal. Sometimes there were variations in the can's color or packaging or condition, but it was nearly always shown against a plain white background, in isolation.

"Campbell's Soup Cans II," made in 1969 and displayed at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, presents ten cans with flavors ranging from "Old Fashioned Vegetable Soup Made with Beef Broth" (upper left) to "Cheddar Cheese Soup" (bottom right).