Fun and surprising true facts about famous paintings, including missing works and unusual histories.
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- Why was the Mona Lisa stolen from the Louvre in 1911?
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A handyman attempted to reclaim it for Italy, believing it had been wrongly taken from the country- Who was the actual subject of Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring?
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Unknown; the painting's subject has never been definitively identified- What food inspired Salvador Dalí to paint melting clocks?
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Soft Camembert cheese melting in the sun- How many crew members died in the shipwreck that inspired The Raft of the Medusa?
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149 out of 160 crew members perished- What philosophical question does Magritte raise by covering the figure's face with an apple in The Son of Man?
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What can we truly see, and what remains obscured from our view?- Why does Rembrandt's The Night Watch appear so dark?
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Centuries of accumulated grime and varnish darkened it; it actually depicts daytime- Who painted Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, one of the defining images of Romanticism?
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Caspar David Friedrich- What time of day is depicted in Edward Hopper's Nighthawks?
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Late night, in an urban diner lit by artificial light- How many Black Paintings did Goya paint directly onto the walls of his house?
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Fourteen disturbing works, including Saturn Devouring His Son- What medical condition did Christina have in Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World?
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A degenerative muscle disorder that left her unable to walk- Where was Edvard Munch when he experienced the anxiety that inspired The Scream?
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On a bridge in Oslo, Norway- What is the official title of the painting commonly called Whistler's Mother?
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Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1- How many individual prints are in Hokusai's Mount Fuji series?
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Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji contains 36 woodblock prints- What optical technique did Georges Seurat use in A Sunday on La Grande Jatte?
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Pointillism, applying tiny dots of pure color that blend in the viewer's eye- Who was Jean-Paul Marat, the subject of Jacques-Louis David's The Death of Marat?
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A French Revolutionary politician assassinated in his bathtub
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