Art and Painting Quiz

About this test

Art history sticks better through techniques than through names. A movement is almost never a pure idea: it usually starts with a material constraint that changes. Impressionism owes a great deal to the invention of the collapsible tin paint tube in the 1840s, which made it possible to leave the studio and paint in front of the subject. Without that tube, no sessions out in the open, and so no light captured in forty minutes.

Ultramarine makes the point even more plainly. Before a synthetic equivalent arrived in the 19th century, the most intense blue available to painters was ground from lapis lazuli imported from Afghanistan, and by weight it cost more than gold. Commission contracts therefore specified how much blue was permitted, and the pigment was reserved for the most important figures in the composition. A hierarchy of colour that was first a hierarchy of budget.

The best habit for improving is to look at the surface rather than the subject. A fresco is necessarily on a wall and necessarily fast, because the plaster dries. A tempera has crisp edges and matt colour. Oil allows glazes, and therefore depth. Before you know who painted something, you can often deduce when and how — and that is usually where the real pleasure starts.

How it works

Twenty questions with four options each, from the most famous works to technical processes, with exactly one correct answer every time. Works are described in words and never reproduced. The full breakdown appears at the end.