Fine Arts
Painting, sculpture, architecture and music: the movements, names, works and terms that show up most in Scholars Bowl questions, plus the Kansas connections that turn up in state-level sets.
Art Movements Timeline
↑ topQuestions often describe a style (“this movement used flat areas of wild, non-natural color…”) and ask for its name, or name three artists and ask what movement links them. Learn the recognition traits column as well as the names.
Ancient through Renaissance
| Movement | Dates | How to recognize it | Key artists | Signature works | More |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ancient Greek | c. 800–31 BC | Geometric → Archaic (stiff kouros statues with the “Archaic smile”) → Classical (idealized bodies, contrapposto) → Hellenistic (drama, emotion, twisting motion). Vase painting: black-figure (black figures on red clay) then red-figure (from c. 530 BC, the reverse). | Phidias, Polykleitos, Myron, Praxiteles, Lysippos; vase painters Exekias, Euphronios | Parthenon sculptures; Discobolus; Doryphoros; Laocoön; Winged Victory of Samothrace; Exekias’s Achilles and Ajax Playing a Game | learn more · black-figure · red-figure |
| Ancient Roman | c. 500 BC – AD 476 | Realistic (“veristic”) portrait busts with wrinkles; copies of Greek statues; wall frescoes at Pompeii; mosaics; propaganda reliefs on columns and arches. | Mostly anonymous | Augustus of Prima Porta; Trajan’s Column; Ara Pacis; Alexander Mosaic (Pompeii); Villa of the Mysteries frescoes | learn more · Trajan’s Column |
| Byzantine | c. 330–1453 | Flat, frontal, elongated figures; gold backgrounds; mosaics and icons; no attempt at depth. Interrupted by Iconoclasm (726–843). | Anonymous mosaicists; later Andrei Rublev (Russian icons) | Justinian and Theodora mosaics, San Vitale, Ravenna; Deësis mosaic, Hagia Sophia; Rublev’s Trinity | learn more · San Vitale |
| Gothic (incl. Proto-Renaissance & International Gothic) | c. 1150–1400s | Stained glass, illuminated manuscripts, gold-ground altarpieces; figures become more natural and emotional. Giotto adds weight and real space. | Cimabue, Duccio, Giotto, Simone Martini, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Limbourg Brothers, Gentile da Fabriano | Duccio’s Maestà (Siena); Giotto’s Scrovegni (Arena) Chapel; Lorenzetti’s Allegory of Good and Bad Government; Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry | learn more · International Gothic |
| Early Renaissance (Italy) | c. 1400–1490 | Florence and the Medici; linear perspective (worked out by Brunelleschi, written up by Alberti in 1435); classical revival; solid, natural figures; tempera and fresco. | Masaccio, Donatello, Ghiberti, Fra Angelico, Uccello, Piero della Francesca, Mantegna, Botticelli, Verrocchio | Masaccio’s Holy Trinity and Tribute Money; Botticelli’s Birth of Venus; Mantegna’s Lamentation over the Dead Christ | learn more · Early Renaissance |
| High Renaissance | c. 1490–1527 | Balance, harmony, idealized figures, pyramidal compositions, sfumato; centered in Rome under Pope Julius II. Ends with the Sack of Rome (1527). Venice favored rich color (colorito). | Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Bramante; Venetians Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Titian | Mona Lisa; Last Supper; Sistine Chapel ceiling; School of Athens; Giorgione’s The Tempest | learn more |
| Northern Renaissance | c. 1430–1580 | Flanders, the Netherlands, Germany. Oil paint used for jewel-like detail; hidden symbolism; domestic interiors; printmaking (woodcut, engraving); peasants and landscapes. | Jan van Eyck, Robert Campin, Rogier van der Weyden, Hans Memling, Bosch, Bruegel, Dürer, Holbein, Grünewald, Cranach | Arnolfini Portrait; Ghent Altarpiece; Garden of Earthly Delights; Hunters in the Snow; Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece | learn more · Early Netherlandish |
| Mannerism | c. 1520–1600 | “Mannered” and artificial: elongated limbs and necks, twisted poses, acid colors, crowded or illogical space. | Pontormo, Parmigianino, Bronzino, Rosso Fiorentino, El Greco; sculptors Cellini, Giambologna | Parmigianino’s Madonna with the Long Neck; Bronzino’s Allegory with Venus and Cupid; El Greco’s Burial of the Count of Orgaz | learn more · Long Neck |
The Pre-Raphaelites (1848) were not followers of Raphael. They rejected the academic tradition that grew out of Raphael and wanted to paint with the detail and bright color of art from before him. learn more
Baroque through the 19th century
| Movement | Dates | How to recognize it | Key artists | Signature works | More |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baroque | c. 1600–1750 | Drama, motion, strong diagonals, theatrical lighting (tenebrism); Counter-Reformation emotion in Catholic Italy and Spain; quiet everyday scenes in the Protestant Dutch Golden Age. | Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi, Annibale Carracci, Bernini (sculpture), Rubens, van Dyck, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Frans Hals, Velázquez, Poussin | Calling of St. Matthew; The Night Watch; Las Meninas; Ecstasy of Saint Teresa | learn more · Dutch Golden Age |
| Rococo | c. 1720–1780 | French, light and frivolous: pastel colors, curving ornament (from rocaille, shell-work), aristocrats flirting in gardens (the fête galante). | Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard, Tiepolo; Vigée Le Brun (portraits of Marie Antoinette) | Pilgrimage to Cythera; The Swing; Tiepolo’s Würzburg Residenz ceiling | learn more · fête galante |
| Neoclassicism | c. 1760–1830 | Reaction against Rococo, sparked by the excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii. Crisp outlines, stoic Greek and Roman subjects, civic virtue; Winckelmann’s “noble simplicity and quiet grandeur.” | Jacques-Louis David, Ingres, Angelica Kauffman; sculptors Canova, Houdon | Oath of the Horatii; Death of Marat; Grande Odalisque | learn more |
| Romanticism | c. 1790–1850 | Emotion over reason; the sublime power of nature; exotic, violent or heroic subjects; loose, energetic brushwork and strong color. | Géricault, Delacroix, Goya, Turner, Constable, Caspar David Friedrich, William Blake | Raft of the Medusa; Liberty Leading the People; Wanderer above the Sea of Fog; The Fighting Temeraire | learn more · Romantic art |
| Hudson River School | c. 1825–1875 | First American landscape movement: grand, glowing views of the Catskills, Adirondacks and later the American West; nature as a sign of God and national destiny. Luminism is its quiet, light-filled offshoot. | Thomas Cole (founder), Asher B. Durand, Frederic Edwin Church, Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran, Sanford Gifford | The Oxbow; Kindred Spirits; Heart of the Andes; The Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak | learn more · Luminism |
| Realism | c. 1840–1880 | Ordinary people and labor painted at full scale, unidealized. Courbet: “Show me an angel and I’ll paint one.” The French Barbizon School painted rural landscape. | Courbet, Millet, Daumier, Rosa Bonheur; Americans Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins | Burial at Ornans; The Stone Breakers; The Gleaners; The Gross Clinic | learn more · Barbizon |
| Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood | founded 1848 (England) | Bright, jewel-like color; sharp detail; medieval, literary and religious subjects (Shakespeare, Tennyson, Dante). Members signed works “PRB.” Supported by critic John Ruskin. | Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt; later Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris, J. W. Waterhouse | Millais’s Ophelia; Hunt’s The Light of the World; Rossetti’s Beata Beatrix; Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shalott | learn more |
| Impressionism | c. 1867–1886 (exhibitions 1874–1886) | Painted en plein air; visible, broken brushstrokes; the changing effects of light; modern Parisian leisure; colored shadows (little black). Named by critic Louis Leroy after Monet’s Impression, Sunrise at the first group show (1874, in photographer Nadar’s old studio). | Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissarro, Sisley, Morisot, Cassatt, Caillebotte (Manet was close to them but never exhibited with them) | Impression, Sunrise; Water Lilies series; Bal du moulin de la Galette; Degas’s ballet dancers | learn more |
| Post-Impressionism | c. 1886–1905 | Not one style. Artists who started from Impressionism but went further: structure (Cézanne), emotion (Van Gogh), flat symbolic color (Gauguin), science (Seurat). Term coined by critic Roger Fry (London show, 1910). | Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat, Toulouse-Lautrec | The Starry Night; Mont Sainte-Victoire; Where Do We Come From?…; At the Moulin Rouge | learn more |
| Pointillism (Neo-Impressionism, Divisionism) | c. 1884–1905 | Tiny dots of pure color placed side by side so they mix in the viewer’s eye (optical mixing), based on color theory (Chevreul). Stiff, frozen figures. | Georges Seurat, Paul Signac | A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte; Bathers at Asnières | learn more · Neo-Impressionism |
| Symbolism | c. 1880–1910 | Dreams, myth, mysticism, death and desire, against Realism. Ideas and moods rather than observation. | Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon, Puvis de Chavannes, Arnold Böcklin, Fernand Khnopff; also early Munch and Klimt | Böcklin’s Isle of the Dead (inspired Rachmaninoff’s tone poem); Moreau’s The Apparition | learn more · Isle of the Dead |
| Art Nouveau (Jugendstil; Vienna Secession) | c. 1890–1910 | Decorative arts and design: “whiplash” curves, plants, flowing hair, stylized flat patterns. Named for Siegfried Bing’s Paris shop. Called Jugendstil in Germany and Secession style in Austria. | Alphonse Mucha, Gustav Klimt, Aubrey Beardsley, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Hector Guimard, Victor Horta, Antoni Gaudí, René Lalique | Mucha’s posters of Sarah Bernhardt; Guimard’s Paris Métro entrances; Tiffany lamps; Klimt’s The Kiss | learn more · Vienna Secession |
“Rejected from the official Salon” points to the Salon des Refusés (1863, ordered by Napoleon III). Its star was Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe. learn more
Modern movements (1900–1980s)
| Movement | Dates | How to recognize it | Key artists | Signature works | More |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ashcan School (U.S.) | c. 1900–1915 | Gritty New York street life: tenements, boxing, bars. Core members exhibited as “The Eight” (1908). | Robert Henri, John Sloan, George Bellows, George Luks, Everett Shinn | Bellows’s Stag at Sharkey’s; Sloan’s McSorley’s Bar | learn more |
| Fauvism | 1905–c. 1908 | Wild, non-natural color straight from the tube (green faces, red trees); bold flat shapes. Critic Louis Vauxcelles called them fauves (“wild beasts”) at the 1905 Salon d’Automne. | Henri Matisse (leader), André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, Raoul Dufy, Georges Rouault | Matisse’s Woman with a Hat, The Joy of Life; Derain’s Charing Cross Bridge | learn more |
| Expressionism | c. 1905–1925 | Distorted forms and harsh color to express inner feeling and anxiety (Munch and Van Gogh were its forerunners). Two German groups: Die Brücke (“The Bridge,” Dresden, 1905: jagged, angular city scenes and woodcuts) and Der Blaue Reiter (“The Blue Rider,” Munich, 1911: spiritual, moving toward abstraction). Also Austrians Schiele and Kokoschka. The Nazis later mocked it in the “Degenerate Art” show (1937). | Die Brücke: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Max Pechstein, Emil Nolde. Blaue Reiter: Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, August Macke, Gabriele Münter (with Paul Klee) | Kirchner’s Street, Dresden; Marc’s The Large Blue Horses and Yellow Cow; Kandinsky’s Composition VII; Kokoschka’s The Bride of the Wind | learn more · Die Brücke · Der Blaue Reiter · Degenerate Art |
| Cubism | 1907–1920s | Objects broken into geometric facets and shown from several viewpoints at once. Analytic Cubism (c. 1909–1912): splintered, nearly monochrome browns and grays. Synthetic Cubism (c. 1912 on): brighter, flatter, and uses collage and papier collé (pasted paper). Named after Vauxcelles mocked Braque’s “little cubes.” | Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque (founders), Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, Robert and Sonia Delaunay (Orphism) | Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (proto-Cubist); Braque’s Houses at L’Estaque; Picasso’s Still Life with Chair Caning (first collage, 1912); Three Musicians | learn more · Chair Caning |
| Futurism | 1909–c. 1916 | Italian. Celebrated speed, machines, violence and the modern city; repeated forms show motion. Launched by poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s manifesto in Le Figaro (1909). | Umberto Boccioni, Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini, Carlo Carrà | Boccioni’s sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (on Italy’s 20-cent euro coin); Balla’s Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash | learn more · Unique Forms |
| Suprematism & Constructivism | 1913–1930s | Russian avant-garde. Suprematism: pure geometric shapes floating on white. Constructivism: art as engineering, in service of the revolution. | Kazimir Malevich; Vladimir Tatlin, Alexander Rodchenko, El Lissitzky | Malevich’s Black Square (1915); Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International (model) | Suprematism · Constructivism |
| Dada | 1916–c. 1924 | Anti-art protest against the logic that produced World War I: nonsense, chance, readymades, photomontage. Started at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich (1916). | Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara, Jean (Hans) Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Hannah Höch, Kurt Schwitters, Francis Picabia | Duchamp’s Fountain (a urinal signed “R. Mutt,” 1917) and L.H.O.O.Q. (Mona Lisa with a mustache); Schwitters’s Merz collages | learn more · Cabaret Voltaire |
| Surrealism | 1924–1940s | The unconscious and dreams (Freud); illogical but realistically painted scenes (Dalí, Magritte), or automatism and biomorphic abstraction (Miró, Ernst). Founded by André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto (1924). | Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Joan Miró, Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy, Meret Oppenheim; forerunner Giorgio de Chirico | The Persistence of Memory; The Treachery of Images; Oppenheim’s fur-lined teacup (Object) | learn more · Manifesto |
| De Stijl (Neoplasticism) | 1917–1931 | Dutch (“The Style”). Only horizontal and vertical black lines, primary colors (red, yellow, blue) plus white, black and gray. | Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg, Gerrit Rietveld | Mondrian’s Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow; Rietveld’s Red and Blue Chair and Schröder House (Utrecht) | learn more · Schröder House |
| Bauhaus | 1919–1933 | German school uniting art, craft and industrial design: clean geometric forms, steel and glass, function first. Founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar, moved to Dessau (1925) and Berlin (1932), closed under Nazi pressure in 1933. | Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe (last director), Kandinsky, Klee, Josef Albers, László Moholy-Nagy, Marcel Breuer, Johannes Itten | Bauhaus building, Dessau; Breuer’s Wassily Chair; Albers’s Homage to the Square series | learn more · Wassily Chair |
| Mexican Muralism | 1920s–1950s | Huge public murals on Mexican history, workers and revolution, after the Mexican Revolution. “Los Tres Grandes.” | Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros | Rivera’s Detroit Industry murals and National Palace murals | learn more |
| Harlem Renaissance (visual art) | c. 1918–1937 | African American cultural flowering centered in Harlem; Alain Locke’s anthology The New Negro (1925). Art blended African motifs, Cubist geometry, jazz and Black history. | Aaron Douglas (born in Topeka, Kansas), Augusta Savage, Archibald Motley, Palmer Hayden, Lois Mailou Jones, James Van Der Zee (photographer), Richmond Barthé; Jacob Lawrence came of age at its end | Douglas’s Aspects of Negro Life murals (New York Public Library, now Schomburg Center); Savage’s The Harp (1939 World’s Fair); Motley’s Nightlife | learn more · Aaron Douglas · Augusta Savage |
| Regionalism (American Scene) | c. 1930–1945 | Depression-era painters who rejected European modernism and painted rural Midwestern life, farms and folk history in a realistic, often curving, stylized way. The “Regionalist triumvirate” is Wood (Iowa), Benton (Missouri), Curry (Kansas). | Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, John Steuart Curry | American Gothic; Benton’s A Social History of the State of Missouri (Missouri State Capitol); Curry’s Baptism in Kansas and Tragic Prelude | learn more · American Scene |
| Abstract Expressionism (New York School) | c. 1943–1960 | First major American movement with worldwide influence; huge canvases. Two branches: Action painting (gestural, drips; named by critic Harold Rosenberg) and Color Field (large flat areas of color). Critic Clement Greenberg championed it. | Action: Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Lee Krasner. Color Field: Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, Helen Frankenthaler | Pollock’s Autumn Rhythm; de Kooning’s Woman I; Rothko Chapel (Houston); Newman’s “zip” paintings | learn more · Action painting · Color Field |
| Pop Art | mid-1950s–1970 | Mass culture as subject: advertising, comics, celebrities, consumer products; commercial techniques such as silkscreen and Ben-Day dots. Began in Britain (Richard Hamilton, Eduardo Paolozzi), peaked in the U.S. | Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, Tom Wesselmann, Robert Indiana, Richard Hamilton; precursors Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg | Campbell’s Soup Cans; Marilyn Diptych; Whaam!; Indiana’s LOVE; Hamilton’s Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing? | learn more · Ben-Day dots |
| Op Art | 1960s | “Optical” art: precise geometric patterns that seem to vibrate, swell or move. Highlighted by MoMA’s 1965 show The Responsive Eye. | Bridget Riley, Victor Vasarely | Riley’s Movement in Squares and Current | learn more · Bridget Riley |
| Minimalism | 1960s–1970s | Stripped to simple geometric forms, often industrial materials, repetition, no expression or story. Frank Stella: “What you see is what you see.” | Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Carl Andre, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, Frank Stella | Judd’s stacked metal boxes; Flavin’s fluorescent-light pieces; Andre’s Equivalent VIII (bricks) | learn more · Donald Judd |
| Later trends | 1960s–1980s | Conceptual art (the idea is the art); Land art (earthworks); Photorealism; Neo-Expressionism (raw, figurative painting returns in the 1980s). | Sol LeWitt, Robert Smithson, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Chuck Close, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Anselm Kiefer | Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (Great Salt Lake, 1970); Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Gates (Central Park, 2005) | Conceptual · Land art · Spiral Jetty · Neo-Expressionism |
Kansas flag: John Steuart Curry was born on a farm near Dunavant in Jefferson County, Kansas. His mural Tragic Prelude (1937–1942), showing a wild-eyed John Brown with a Bible and rifle against a tornado and prairie fire, is in the Kansas State Capitol in Topeka. The legislature balked at his plans, and Curry left the murals unsigned. The image was also used as the cover of the band Kansas’s first album (1974). learn more · Tragic Prelude
Clue words: “dots” → Pointillism; “wild beasts” → Fauvism; “Cabaret Voltaire” or “readymade” → Dada; “Breton’s manifesto” → Surrealism; “Marinetti” or “speed” → Futurism; “The Bridge” vs. “The Blue Rider” → German Expressionism; “primary colors and black grid lines” → De Stijl/Mondrian; “drips” → Pollock/Abstract Expressionism; “Ben-Day dots” → Lichtenstein/Pop. list of art movements
Painters
↑ topGrouped roughly by era. The “quiz clue” column holds the kind of fact that shows up early in a tossup, before the famous works give it away.
Medieval and Renaissance
| Artist | Dates | Nationality | Movement | Key works | Quiz clue | More |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Giotto di Bondone | c. 1267–1337 | Florentine | Proto-Renaissance | Scrovegni (Arena) Chapel frescoes, Padua, incl. Lamentation; Ognissanti Madonna; designed Florence’s campanile (bell tower) | Broke with flat Byzantine style; gave figures weight and emotion. Pupil of Cimabue; Vasari’s legend says he drew a perfect freehand circle (“Giotto’s O”). | learn more · Scrovegni Chapel |
| Masaccio | 1401–1428 | Florentine | Early Renaissance | Holy Trinity (Santa Maria Novella); Tribute Money and Expulsion from the Garden of Eden (Brancacci Chapel) | First painter to use Brunelleschi’s linear perspective consistently; died at about 26. Name means roughly “clumsy Tom.” | learn more · Holy Trinity |
| Sandro Botticelli | c. 1445–1510 | Florentine | Early Renaissance | The Birth of Venus; Primavera; Adoration of the Magi; frescoes on the Sistine Chapel walls | Medici favorite; mythological nudes. Later fell under the influence of the friar Savonarola (Bonfire of the Vanities). | learn more |
| Leonardo da Vinci | 1452–1519 | Florentine (Italian) | High Renaissance | Mona Lisa; The Last Supper; Vitruvian Man; Lady with an Ermine; Virgin of the Rocks (two versions: Louvre and London) | Trained under Verrocchio; notebooks in mirror writing; master of sfumato. Died at Amboise, France, as guest of Francis I. Salvator Mundi sold for $450.3 million (2017). Only Leonardo painting in the Americas: Ginevra de’ Benci (National Gallery of Art, D.C.). | learn more |
| Michelangelo Buonarroti | 1475–1564 | Florentine (Italian) | High Renaissance | Sistine Chapel ceiling (1508–1512) and Last Judgment (1536–1541); Doni Tondo; sculptures David, Pietà, Moses | Considered himself a sculptor first; painted the ceiling for Pope Julius II. Designed the dome of St. Peter’s. Self-portrait as the flayed skin held by St. Bartholomew in the Last Judgment. | learn more |
| Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio) | 1483–1520 | Italian (born Urbino) | High Renaissance | The School of Athens; Sistine Madonna (two bored cherubs at the bottom); The Transfiguration; Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione | Painted the papal apartments (Raphael Rooms, or Stanze) in the Vatican; many gentle Madonnas. Died at 37; buried in the Pantheon. | learn more · Raphael Rooms |
| Titian (Tiziano Vecellio) | c. 1488/90–1576 | Venetian | High Renaissance (Venetian) | Venus of Urbino; Assumption of the Virgin (Frari church, Venice); Bacchus and Ariadne; Equestrian Portrait of Charles V | Master of color (colorito); court painter to Emperor Charles V and Philip II of Spain. “Titian red” hair. | learn more |
| Jan van Eyck | c. 1390–1441 | Flemish | Northern Renaissance (Early Netherlandish) | Arnolfini Portrait; Ghent Altarpiece (Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, with brother Hubert); Man in a Red Turban (likely self-portrait) | Perfected (did not invent) oil painting. Motto “Als ich can” (“As I can”). Signed the Arnolfini wall “Johannes de eyck fuit hic 1434.” | learn more |
| Hieronymus Bosch | c. 1450–1516 | Dutch (’s-Hertogenbosch) | Northern Renaissance | The Garden of Earthly Delights; The Haywain Triptych; The Temptation of St. Anthony; Ship of Fools | Bizarre hybrid monsters, sin and hell; often called a forerunner of Surrealism. Named after his hometown. | learn more |
| Pieter Bruegel the Elder | c. 1525/30–1569 | Flemish | Northern Renaissance | Hunters in the Snow; The Tower of Babel; Netherlandish Proverbs; The Peasant Wedding; Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (attributed) | “Peasant Bruegel”: village life, seasons, proverbs. Icarus painting inspired W. H. Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts” and a poem by William Carlos Williams. Sons Pieter the Younger and Jan were also painters. | learn more |
| Albrecht Dürer | 1471–1528 | German (Nuremberg) | Northern Renaissance | Engravings Melencolia I and Knight, Death and the Devil; woodcut Rhinoceros; Self-Portrait (1500, Christ-like); Young Hare; Praying Hands | Greatest printmaker of the Renaissance; “AD” monogram; traveled to Italy and brought Renaissance ideas north. | learn more |
| Hans Holbein the Younger | 1497/98–1543 | German, worked in England | Northern Renaissance | The Ambassadors (hidden anamorphic skull); portraits of Henry VIII, Thomas More, Erasmus, Anne of Cleves | Court painter to Henry VIII; his flattering portrait of Anne of Cleves helped persuade Henry to marry her. | learn more |
| El Greco (Doménikos Theotokópoulos) | 1541–1614 | Greek (born Crete), worked in Toledo, Spain | Mannerism | The Burial of the Count of Orgaz; View of Toledo; The Opening of the Fifth Seal; Laocoön | Elongated, flame-like figures and stormy skies; nickname means “the Greek.” | learn more |
Baroque, Rococo and Neoclassical
| Artist | Dates | Nationality | Movement | Key works | Quiz clue | More |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) | 1571–1610 | Italian | Baroque | The Calling of St. Matthew; Conversion of Saint Paul; Judith Beheading Holofernes; Supper at Emmaus; Medusa (on a shield) | Dramatic tenebrism; used street people as models for saints. Killed a man (Ranuccio Tomassoni) in 1606 and fled to Naples, Malta and Sicily. Followers called Caravaggisti. | learn more |
| Artemisia Gentileschi | 1593–c. 1656 | Italian | Baroque | Judith Slaying Holofernes; Susanna and the Elders; Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting | Daughter of painter Orazio Gentileschi; first woman admitted to Florence’s Accademia delle Arti del Disegno; powerful heroines. | learn more |
| Peter Paul Rubens | 1577–1640 | Flemish (Antwerp) | Baroque | The Elevation of the Cross and Descent from the Cross (Antwerp Cathedral); Marie de’ Medici Cycle (Louvre); The Three Graces | Also a knighted diplomat; huge workshop; fleshy nudes gave us “Rubenesque.” | learn more |
| Anthony van Dyck | 1599–1641 | Flemish, worked in England | Baroque | Charles I at the Hunt; Equestrian Portrait of Charles I | Rubens’s star assistant; court painter to Charles I; the pointed “Van Dyke” beard is named after him. | learn more |
| Rembrandt van Rijn | 1606–1669 | Dutch | Baroque (Dutch Golden Age) | The Night Watch; The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp; The Return of the Prodigal Son; Syndics of the Drapers’ Guild; dozens of self-portraits | Born in Leiden, worked in Amsterdam; master of chiaroscuro and etching; went bankrupt in 1656. | learn more |
| Johannes Vermeer | 1632–1675 | Dutch (Delft) | Baroque (Dutch Golden Age) | Girl with a Pearl Earring; The Milkmaid; View of Delft; The Art of Painting; The Astronomer | Only about 34–37 known paintings; quiet interiors lit from a window on the left; may have used a camera obscura. The Concert was stolen in the 1990 Gardner Museum heist. | learn more |
| Frans Hals | c. 1582–1666 | Dutch (Haarlem) | Baroque (Dutch Golden Age) | The Laughing Cavalier; militia group portraits | Loose, lively brushwork capturing fleeting expressions. | learn more |
| Diego Velázquez | 1599–1660 | Spanish | Baroque | Las Meninas; The Surrender of Breda; Portrait of Pope Innocent X; Rokeby Venus; The Spinners | Court painter to Philip IV. Francis Bacon’s “screaming popes” riff on his Innocent X; Picasso painted 58 variations of Las Meninas. | learn more |
| Antoine Watteau | 1684–1721 | French | Rococo | Pilgrimage to Cythera; Pierrot (formerly called Gilles) | Invented the fête galante (elegant outdoor party) genre. | learn more |
| Jean-Honoré Fragonard | 1732–1806 | French | Rococo | The Swing; Young Girl Reading; The Progress of Love (Frick Collection) | Playful, flirtatious scenes; career collapsed with the French Revolution. | learn more |
| Thomas Gainsborough | 1727–1788 | English | Rococo / Georgian portraiture | The Blue Boy; Mr and Mrs Andrews | Portraitist and landscapist; rival of Sir Joshua Reynolds (first president of the Royal Academy). | learn more |
| Jacques-Louis David | 1748–1825 | French | Neoclassicism | Oath of the Horatii; The Death of Marat; The Death of Socrates; Napoleon Crossing the Alps; The Coronation of Napoleon | Jacobin who voted for Louis XVI’s execution; later Napoleon’s official painter; died in exile in Brussels. | learn more |
| Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres | 1780–1867 | French | Neoclassicism | Grande Odalisque (critics said she had extra vertebrae); The Turkish Bath; Napoleon I on His Imperial Throne; The Valpinçon Bather | Pupil of David; champion of line against Delacroix’s color. He played violin, giving French the idiom violon d’Ingres (“hobby”). | learn more |
| Francisco Goya | 1746–1828 | Spanish | Romanticism (bridges to modern art) | The Third of May 1808; Saturn Devouring His Son (Black Paintings); La maja desnuda / vestida; Charles IV of Spain and His Family; prints Los Caprichos and The Disasters of War | Court painter to Charles IV; went deaf after an illness in 1792–93. Caprichos plate: “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.” | learn more |
Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism
| Artist | Dates | Nationality | Movement | Key works | Quiz clue | More |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Théodore Géricault | 1791–1824 | French | Romanticism | The Raft of the Medusa; The Charging Chasseur; portraits of the insane (monomaniacs) | Studied corpses for the Medusa; obsessed with horses; died at 32 after riding accidents. | learn more |
| Eugène Delacroix | 1798–1863 | French | Romanticism | Liberty Leading the People; The Death of Sardanapalus; The Massacre at Chios; The Women of Algiers | Leader of French Romanticism; trip to Morocco (1832) fed his “Orientalist” scenes; rival of Ingres. | learn more |
| J. M. W. Turner | 1775–1851 | English | Romanticism | The Fighting Temeraire; Rain, Steam and Speed; The Slave Ship; Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth | “Painter of light”; swirling, near-abstract storms. The Turner Prize is named for him; he appears on the Bank of England £20 note (2020). | learn more |
| John Constable | 1776–1837 | English | Romanticism | The Hay Wain; Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s Grounds; Flatford Mill; Wivenhoe Park | Painted his native Suffolk (“Constable Country”) and the Stour valley; famous cloud studies. | learn more |
| Caspar David Friedrich | 1774–1840 | German | Romanticism | Wanderer above the Sea of Fog; The Sea of Ice; The Monk by the Sea; The Abbey in the Oakwood | Lone figures seen from behind (Rückenfigur) contemplating sublime nature. | learn more |
| William Blake | 1757–1827 | English | Romanticism | The Ancient of Days; Newton; illustrated Songs of Innocence and of Experience | Poet and visionary printmaker (“The Tyger”); invented “relief etching” to print his illuminated books. | learn more |
| Gustave Courbet | 1819–1877 | French | Realism | A Burial at Ornans; The Stone Breakers (destroyed 1945); The Painter’s Studio; Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet | Leader of Realism; built his own “Pavilion of Realism” in 1855. Blamed for toppling the Vendôme Column during the Paris Commune; died in exile in Switzerland. | learn more |
| Jean-François Millet | 1814–1875 | French | Realism / Barbizon School | The Gleaners; The Angelus; The Sower | Dignified peasants at work; The Angelus shows a couple praying in a field. Dalí was obsessed with it. | learn more |
| Édouard Manet | 1832–1883 | French | Realism / bridge to Impressionism | Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe; Olympia; A Bar at the Folies-Bergère; The Fifer; The Execution of Emperor Maximilian | Scandal-maker of the 1860s; Salon des Refusés (1863); never showed in the Impressionist exhibitions. Painted mostly people and used black boldly. | learn more |
| Claude Monet | 1840–1926 | French | Impressionism | Impression, Sunrise; Water Lilies series; Rouen Cathedral series; Haystacks (Grainstacks) series; Woman with a Parasol | His painting named the movement. Painted the same subject in series under different light. Garden and lily pond at Giverny. | learn more |
| Pierre-Auguste Renoir | 1841–1919 | French | Impressionism | Luncheon of the Boating Party; Bal du moulin de la Galette; Dance at Bougival; Two Sisters (On the Terrace) | Cheerful scenes of Parisians at leisure; painted late in life despite severe rheumatoid arthritis. Father of film director Jean Renoir. | learn more |
| Edgar Degas | 1834–1917 | French | Impressionism (called himself a Realist) | The Dance Class; L’Absinthe; The Bellelli Family; sculpture Little Dancer Aged Fourteen | Ballet dancers, racehorses, laundresses; worked in pastel; odd cropped angles influenced by photography and Japanese prints. | learn more |
| Camille Pissarro | 1830–1903 | French (born St. Thomas, Danish West Indies) | Impressionism | Boulevard Montmartre series; The Red Roofs | Only artist to show in all eight Impressionist exhibitions; mentor (“father figure”) to Cézanne and Gauguin. | learn more |
| Berthe Morisot | 1841–1895 | French | Impressionism | The Cradle; Summer’s Day; In the Dining Room | Founding Impressionist woman; married Eugène Manet, Édouard’s brother. | learn more |
| Mary Cassatt | 1844–1926 | American (born Allegheny City, Pennsylvania), worked in Paris | Impressionism | The Child’s Bath; Little Girl in a Blue Armchair; The Boating Party | Invited to exhibit by Degas; specialized in mothers and children; influenced by Japanese prints; helped American collectors buy Impressionist art. | learn more |
| Paul Cézanne | 1839–1906 | French (Aix-en-Provence) | Post-Impressionism | Mont Sainte-Victoire series; The Card Players; The Large Bathers; still lifes with apples | “Father of modern art”; said to treat nature “by the cylinder, the sphere, the cone.” Childhood friend of novelist Émile Zola. | learn more |
| Vincent van Gogh | 1853–1890 | Dutch, worked in France | Post-Impressionism | The Starry Night; Sunflowers; The Potato Eaters; Bedroom in Arles; Café Terrace at Night; Wheatfield with Crows | Thick impasto, swirling strokes; letters to his brother Theo. Cut off part of his ear in Arles (1888) after a fight with Gauguin; painted Starry Night in the asylum at Saint-Rémy; died at Auvers-sur-Oise. Sold very little in his lifetime. | learn more |
| Paul Gauguin | 1848–1903 | French | Post-Impressionism / Synthetism | Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?; Vision After the Sermon; The Yellow Christ; Spirit of the Dead Watching | Former stockbroker who left his family for Brittany and then Tahiti; died in the Marquesas. Flat areas of bold color. Inspired Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence. | learn more |
| Georges Seurat | 1859–1891 | French | Pointillism / Neo-Impressionism | A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte; Bathers at Asnières; The Circus; Le Chahut | Scientific color dots; died at 31. Subject of Sondheim’s musical Sunday in the Park with George. | learn more |
| Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec | 1864–1901 | French | Post-Impressionism | At the Moulin Rouge; poster Moulin Rouge: La Goulue; Jane Avril and Divan Japonais posters | Aristocrat whose legs stopped growing after childhood fractures; chronicled Montmartre nightlife; raised the lithographic poster to fine art. | learn more |
| Henri Rousseau | 1844–1910 | French | Naïve / Primitive | The Sleeping Gypsy; The Dream; Tiger in a Tropical Storm (Surprised!) | Self-taught customs officer (“Le Douanier”); painted jungles though he never left France. | learn more |
| Dante Gabriel Rossetti | 1828–1882 | English | Pre-Raphaelite | Beata Beatrix; Proserpine; The Girlhood of Mary Virgin; La Pia de’ Tolomei (Spencer Museum, KU) | Poet-painter, named after Dante; wife and model Elizabeth Siddal. | learn more |
| John Everett Millais | 1829–1896 | English | Pre-Raphaelite | Ophelia; Christ in the House of His Parents; Bubbles | Co-founder of the PRB; Siddal posed for Ophelia in a bathtub. | learn more |
Modern Europe and Latin America
| Artist | Dates | Nationality | Movement | Key works | Quiz clue | More |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Edvard Munch | 1863–1944 | Norwegian | Symbolism / Expressionism | The Scream; Madonna; The Sick Child; Vampire; the Frieze of Life cycle | Anxiety, illness and death; The Scream exists in several versions (paintings, pastels, prints), two of which were stolen and recovered (1994, 2004). | learn more |
| Gustav Klimt | 1862–1918 | Austrian | Vienna Secession / Art Nouveau | The Kiss; Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (“Woman in Gold”); Beethoven Frieze; Judith and the Head of Holofernes | Gold leaf (“Golden Phase”); co-founded the Vienna Secession (1897). Adele was restituted to Maria Altmann and is now in the Neue Galerie, New York. | learn more |
| Egon Schiele | 1890–1918 | Austrian | Expressionism | Self-Portrait with Physalis; Death and the Maiden | Klimt’s protégé; twisted, angular figures; died at 28 in the 1918 flu pandemic. | learn more |
| Henri Matisse | 1869–1954 | French | Fauvism | Woman with a Hat; The Joy of Life; The Dance; The Red Studio; Blue Nudes (paper cut-outs) | Leader of the Fauves; rival and friend of Picasso; in old age made cut-outs (“drawing with scissors”) and designed the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence. | learn more |
| Pablo Picasso | 1881–1973 | Spanish (born Málaga), worked in France | Cubism (and much more) | Les Demoiselles d’Avignon; Guernica; The Old Guitarist; Three Musicians; Family of Saltimbanques | Blue Period (c. 1901–04, poverty, sadness) → Rose Period (1904–06, circus performers) → African-influenced period → Cubism with Braque. Also sculpture: the untitled “Chicago Picasso” (1967). | learn more · Blue Period |
| Georges Braque | 1882–1963 | French | Cubism | Houses at L’Estaque; Violin and Candlestick; Fruit Dish and Glass (first papier collé, 1912) | Co-founder of Cubism with Picasso (“like two mountaineers roped together”); wounded in World War I. | learn more |
| Wassily Kandinsky | 1866–1944 | Russian, worked in Germany and France | Der Blaue Reiter / abstraction | Composition VII; Composition VIII; Yellow-Red-Blue; book Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1911) | Often credited with the first purely abstract paintings; linked colors to musical sounds (likely synesthesia); taught at the Bauhaus. | learn more |
| Franz Marc | 1880–1916 | German | Der Blaue Reiter | The Large Blue Horses; Yellow Cow; Fate of the Animals | Animals in symbolic colors (blue = masculine/spiritual); killed at Verdun. | learn more |
| Piet Mondrian | 1872–1944 | Dutch | De Stijl | Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow; Broadway Boogie Woogie; Victory Boogie Woogie (unfinished); Gray Tree | Grid of black lines with primary colors (“Neoplasticism”); split from van Doesburg over diagonals; jazz-inspired late works in New York. | learn more |
| Paul Klee | 1879–1940 | Swiss-German | Expressionism / Bauhaus | Twittering Machine; Senecio; Angelus Novus; Castle and Sun | Childlike, whimsical signs; taught at the Bauhaus; described drawing as “taking a line for a walk.” | learn more |
| Marcel Duchamp | 1887–1968 | French, later American | Dada / Conceptual | Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2; Fountain; L.H.O.O.Q.; The Large Glass; Étant donnés | Inventor of the readymade; the Nude scandalized the 1913 Armory Show; famously “gave up art” for chess. | learn more |
| Salvador Dalí | 1904–1989 | Spanish (Catalan) | Surrealism | The Persistence of Memory; Swans Reflecting Elephants; Christ of Saint John of the Cross; The Sacrament of the Last Supper; Lobster Telephone | Waxed mustache; “paranoiac-critical method”; made the film Un Chien Andalou with Luis Buñuel and designed the dream sequence in Hitchcock’s Spellbound. Museums in Figueres, Spain, and St. Petersburg, Florida. | learn more |
| René Magritte | 1898–1967 | Belgian | Surrealism | The Treachery of Images (“Ceci n’est pas une pipe”); The Son of Man (bowler hat, green apple); Golconda; The Lovers; The Empire of Light | Witty, deadpan paradoxes painted in a plain, realistic style; men in bowler hats. | learn more |
| Joan Miró | 1893–1983 | Spanish (Catalan) | Surrealism | The Harlequin’s Carnival; The Farm (once owned by Hemingway); Dog Barking at the Moon; Constellations series | Playful biomorphic shapes, stars and squiggles in primary colors. A large Miró mosaic mural, Personnages Oiseaux, is on a building at Wichita State University. | learn more |
| Marc Chagall | 1887–1985 | Russian-French (born near Vitebsk, now Belarus) | Modernism (Jewish folk fantasy) | I and the Village; The Fiddler; Paris Opéra ceiling (1964); America Windows (Art Institute of Chicago); Jerusalem (Hadassah) windows | Floating lovers, goats and fiddlers from shtetl memories; also stained glass. | learn more |
| Kazimir Malevich | 1879–1935 | Russian (born Kyiv) | Suprematism | Black Square; White on White | Founded Suprematism (1915), the “supremacy of pure feeling.” | learn more |
| Frida Kahlo | 1907–1954 | Mexican | Surrealism-adjacent / Mexicanidad | The Two Fridas; Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird; The Broken Column; Frieda and Diego Rivera | About 55 self-portraits; lifelong pain after a bus accident at 18; married Diego Rivera twice. Home: La Casa Azul (Blue House), Coyoacán. “I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.” | learn more |
| Diego Rivera | 1886–1957 | Mexican | Mexican Muralism | Detroit Industry murals (Detroit Institute of Arts); Man at the Crossroads (Rockefeller Center, destroyed 1934); National Palace murals; The Flower Carrier | Communist; Rockefeller mural was removed because it included Lenin; repainted in Mexico City as Man, Controller of the Universe. | learn more |
| Katsushika Hokusai | 1760–1849 | Japanese | Ukiyo-e (woodblock prints) | The Great Wave off Kanagawa; Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji; Fine Wind, Clear Morning (“Red Fuji”); Hokusai Manga sketchbooks | His prints fueled Japonisme in Europe, influencing Monet, Van Gogh, Degas and Cassatt. | learn more |
| Utagawa Hiroshige | 1797–1858 | Japanese | Ukiyo-e | The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō; One Hundred Famous Views of Edo | Van Gogh copied his Plum Park in Kameido and Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi Bridge. | learn more |
American painters
| Artist | Dates | Nationality | Movement | Key works | Quiz clue | More |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| John Singleton Copley | 1738–1815 | American (Boston), moved to London | Colonial portraiture | Watson and the Shark; Paul Revere (holding a teapot) | Best colonial portraitist; left for England on the eve of the Revolution. | learn more |
| Gilbert Stuart | 1755–1828 | American | Federal-era portraiture | George Washington (“Athenaeum” portrait, unfinished, 1796); Lansdowne portrait | His Athenaeum portrait is the source of Washington’s face on the $1 bill. Dolley Madison saved a full-length Washington portrait from the White House in 1814. | learn more |
| Thomas Cole | 1801–1848 | American (born England) | Hudson River School (founder) | The Oxbow; The Course of Empire (5 paintings); The Voyage of Life (4 paintings); Kaaterskill Falls | Lived in Catskill, New York; painted himself at his easel in The Oxbow. | learn more |
| Frederic Edwin Church | 1826–1900 | American | Hudson River School | The Heart of the Andes; Niagara; Twilight in the Wilderness | Cole’s only formal pupil; traveled to South America; home: Olana, on the Hudson. | learn more |
| Albert Bierstadt | 1830–1902 | American (born Germany) | Hudson River School / Rocky Mountain School | The Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak; Among the Sierra Nevada, California; Looking Down Yosemite Valley | Huge, glowing paintings of the American West after traveling with Frederick Lander’s survey (1859). | learn more |
| Thomas Moran | 1837–1926 | American (born England) | Hudson River School / Rocky Mountain School | The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone; The Chasm of the Colorado | His Yellowstone paintings helped persuade Congress to create the first national park (1872). | learn more |
| Emanuel Leutze | 1816–1868 | German-American | Düsseldorf School (history painting) | Washington Crossing the Delaware; Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way (U.S. Capitol mural) | Painted Washington Crossing in Düsseldorf in 1851. | learn more |
| James McNeill Whistler | 1834–1903 | American (born Lowell, Massachusetts), worked in London and Paris | Aestheticism / Tonalism | Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 (“Whistler’s Mother”); Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket; Symphony in White, No. 1; the Peacock Room | “Art for art’s sake”; musical titles. Sued critic John Ruskin for libel over the Falling Rocket (1878) and won one farthing. Was dismissed from West Point. | learn more |
| John Singer Sargent | 1856–1925 | American (born Florence, Italy) | Realism / society portraiture | Madame X; Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose; The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit; El Jaleo; Gassed | Scandal over the slipped shoulder strap in Madame X (1884) drove him from Paris to London; leading portraitist of the Gilded Age. | learn more |
| Winslow Homer | 1836–1910 | American | Realism | Snap the Whip; The Gulf Stream; Breezing Up (A Fair Wind); Prisoners from the Front; The Fog Warning | Civil War illustrator for Harper’s Weekly; later painted the sea from Prouts Neck, Maine; brilliant watercolors. | learn more |
| Thomas Eakins | 1844–1916 | American (Philadelphia) | Realism | The Gross Clinic; The Agnew Clinic; Max Schmitt in a Single Scull; The Swimming Hole | Studied anatomy and used photography; forced out of the Pennsylvania Academy after removing a male model’s loincloth in a class with women. | learn more |
| Frederic Remington | 1861–1909 | American | Western art | A Dash for the Timber; bronze The Bronco Buster | Painter and sculptor of cowboys, cavalry and Plains life; a Bronco Buster cast is often displayed in the Oval Office. | learn more |
| Edward Hopper | 1882–1967 | American | American Realism | Nighthawks; Automat; Early Sunday Morning; Chop Suey; House by the Railroad | Loneliness in diners, offices and hotel rooms; wife Jo posed for nearly all the women. House by the Railroad influenced the house in Hitchcock’s Psycho. | learn more |
| Georgia O’Keeffe | 1887–1986 | American (born Sun Prairie, Wisconsin) | American Modernism / Precisionism | Black Iris; Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1; Cow’s Skull: Red, White, and Blue; Sky Above Clouds IV | Enlarged close-up flowers and desert bones; married photographer Alfred Stieglitz; lived at Ghost Ranch and Abiquiú, New Mexico; museum in Santa Fe. | learn more |
| Grant Wood | 1891–1942 | American (Iowa) | Regionalism | American Gothic; Daughters of Revolution; Parson Weems’ Fable; The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere; Stone City, Iowa | Models for American Gothic were his sister Nan Wood Graham and his dentist, Byron McKeeby; the house is in Eldon, Iowa. | learn more |
| Thomas Hart Benton | 1889–1975 | American (born Neosho, Missouri) | Regionalism | America Today murals (Met); A Social History of the State of Missouri (Missouri State Capitol); Persephone (Nelson-Atkins); Achelous and Hercules; Independence and the Opening of the West (Truman Library) | Taught Jackson Pollock in New York and later taught at the Kansas City Art Institute; named for his great-great-uncle, the 19th-century Missouri senator. | learn more |
| John Steuart Curry | 1897–1946 | American (Kansas) | Regionalism | Tragic Prelude (Kansas State Capitol); Baptism in Kansas; Tornado Over Kansas; The Line Storm | Born near Dunavant, Jefferson County, Kansas; dramatic Kansas storms and religion; later artist-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin. | learn more |
| Norman Rockwell | 1894–1978 | American | Illustration | Saturday Evening Post covers (323 of them); Four Freedoms (1943); Rosie the Riveter; The Problem We All Live With; Triple Self-Portrait | Four Freedoms illustrated FDR’s 1941 speech; The Problem We All Live With shows Ruby Bridges. Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. | learn more |
| Andrew Wyeth | 1917–2009 | American | Realism (Regionalist) | Christina’s World; the Helga pictures | Painted in tempera and drybrush watercolor in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and Cushing, Maine. | learn more |
| Jacob Lawrence | 1917–2000 | African American | Modernism (“dynamic Cubism”); Harlem | The Migration Series (60 panels); Toussaint L’Ouverture series; Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass series | Grew up in Harlem; Migration Series is split between MoMA (even-numbered panels) and the Phillips Collection (odd-numbered). | learn more |
| Jackson Pollock | 1912–1956 | American (born Cody, Wyoming) | Abstract Expressionism (action painting) | Autumn Rhythm (Number 30); Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist); Blue Poles; One: Number 31, 1950; Convergence | Drip/pour paintings on canvas laid on the floor; Time called him “Jack the Dripper.” Student of Benton; married Lee Krasner; died in a car crash. | learn more |
| Willem de Kooning | 1904–1997 | Dutch-American | Abstract Expressionism | Woman I (and the Woman series); Excavation; Interchange | Slashing brushwork; Robert Rauschenberg famously erased one of his drawings (Erased de Kooning Drawing, 1953). | learn more |
| Mark Rothko | 1903–1970 | American (born in the Russian Empire, now Latvia) | Abstract Expressionism (Color Field) | Soft-edged stacked color rectangles; Seagram Murals; Rothko Chapel (Houston) | Withdrew the Seagram murals from the Four Seasons restaurant; wanted viewers to have an emotional, even religious, experience. | learn more |
| Andy Warhol | 1928–1987 | American (born Pittsburgh) | Pop Art | Campbell’s Soup Cans; Marilyn Diptych; Shot Sage Blue Marilyn; Brillo Boxes; Eight Elvises | Silkscreens of celebrities and products; studio called The Factory; “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” Shot by Valerie Solanas in 1968. Museum in Pittsburgh. | learn more |
| Roy Lichtenstein | 1923–1997 | American | Pop Art | Whaam!; Drowning Girl; Look Mickey; In the Car | Enlarged comic-book panels with Ben-Day dots and speech balloons. | learn more |
| Jasper Johns | b. 1930 | American | Neo-Dada / proto-Pop | Flag (1954–55, encaustic); Three Flags; Target with Four Faces; False Start | Painted “things the mind already knows”: flags, targets, numbers, maps. | learn more |
| Jean-Michel Basquiat | 1960–1988 | American (Brooklyn; Haitian and Puerto Rican descent) | Neo-Expressionism | Untitled (skull, 1982, sold for $110.5 million in 2017); Untitled (Skull) (1981); Hollywood Africans; Irony of Negro Policeman | Began as graffiti artist SAMO; crown motif; collaborated with Warhol; died at 27. | learn more |
| David Hockney | b. 1937 | British, long based in California | Pop Art and beyond | A Bigger Splash; Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures); Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy | Swimming pools of Los Angeles; later iPad drawings and photo collages (“joiners”). | learn more |
| Kehinde Wiley | b. 1977 | American | Contemporary portraiture | Official portrait of Barack Obama (2018, National Portrait Gallery); Rumors of War (sculpture) | Black subjects in poses from Old Master portraits against bright patterned backgrounds. Amy Sherald painted Michelle Obama’s portrait. | learn more |
Manet vs. Monet. MAnet painted MAinly people (Olympia, Déjeuner sur l’herbe, Folies-Bergère) and was a generation’s rebel but never joined the Impressionist shows. MOnet painted MOstly landscapes and water (Impression, Sunrise, Water Lilies) and gave Impressionism its name. Both are in the Musée d’Orsay. Manet · Monet
Jan van Eyck vs. Vincent van Gogh vs. Anthony van Dyck. “Van” just means “from.” Van Eyck = 1400s Flemish oil pioneer (Arnolfini Portrait). Van Dyck = 1600s Flemish Baroque portraitist of Charles I. Van Gogh = 1880s Dutch Post-Impressionist (Starry Night). van Eyck · van Dyck · van Gogh
Caravaggio’s first name was also Michelangelo (Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio). If a question says “Michelangelo” plus tenebrism, murder or Malta, it is Caravaggio. learn more
Women artists asked often: Artemisia Gentileschi (Baroque), Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (Marie Antoinette), Rosa Bonheur (The Horse Fair), Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Georgia O’Keeffe, Frida Kahlo, Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, Bridget Riley, Louise Nevelson, Barbara Hepworth, Maya Lin. Vigée Le Brun · Rosa Bonheur · Frankenthaler
Famous Paintings & Where They Hang
↑ top“Where is it now?” questions are common, and a museum is often the last clue. Ordered by date.
| Work | Artist | Year | Where it is now | Recognition clue | More |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lamentation (The Mourning of Christ) | Giotto | c. 1305 | Scrovegni (Arena) Chapel, Padua | Fresco; grieving figures around Christ’s body, shrieking angels in a blue sky; a diagonal rock leads the eye down. | learn more |
| Holy Trinity | Masaccio | c. 1427 | Santa Maria Novella, Florence | Earliest surviving painting with strict linear perspective; coffered barrel vault; a skeleton below reads (in Italian) “I was once what you are, and what I am you will be.” | learn more |
| Ghent Altarpiece (Adoration of the Mystic Lamb) | Hubert and Jan van Eyck | 1432 | St. Bavo’s Cathedral, Ghent, Belgium | Huge polyptych; Lamb of God on an altar bleeding into a chalice. Called the most frequently stolen artwork; the Just Judges panel stolen in 1934 is still missing. Looted by the Nazis and recovered by the “Monuments Men.” | learn more |
| Arnolfini Portrait | Jan van Eyck | 1434 | National Gallery, London | Couple in a bedroom; small dog; single lit candle in the chandelier; convex mirror reflecting two more figures; signature “Johannes de eyck fuit hic 1434.” | learn more |
| Primavera | Botticelli | c. 1480 | Uffizi, Florence | Venus in an orange grove with the Three Graces dancing, Mercury, Flora strewing flowers, and Zephyrus grabbing Chloris; about 500 identified plant species. | learn more |
| The Birth of Venus | Botticelli | c. 1484–1486 | Uffizi, Florence | Venus arrives on a scallop shell, blown ashore by the wind god Zephyr; a Hora (season) holds out a cloak. | learn more |
| The Last Supper | Leonardo da Vinci | c. 1495–1498 | Refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan | Moment after Jesus says “One of you will betray me”; apostles in groups of three; Judas clutches a money bag. Painted in tempera/oil on a dry wall, so it began flaking almost at once. | learn more |
| Mona Lisa (La Gioconda) | Leonardo da Vinci | c. 1503–1519 | Louvre, Paris | Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo; sfumato; no eyebrows; winding landscape. Stolen in 1911 by Vincenzo Peruggia and recovered in 1913. | learn more |
| Lady with an Ermine | Leonardo da Vinci | c. 1489–1491 | Czartoryski Museum (National Museum), Kraków | Cecilia Gallerani holding a white ermine; one of only four Leonardo portraits of women. | learn more |
| The Garden of Earthly Delights | Hieronymus Bosch | c. 1490–1510 | Prado, Madrid | Triptych: Eden (left), a crowded paradise of naked pleasure-seekers and giant fruit (center), and Hell with musical-instrument tortures (right). | learn more |
| Sistine Chapel ceiling | Michelangelo | 1508–1512 | Sistine Chapel, Vatican City | Nine scenes from Genesis, including The Creation of Adam (fingers almost touching); prophets and sibyls; commissioned by Pope Julius II. The chapel hosts papal conclaves. | learn more · Creation of Adam |
| The Last Judgment | Michelangelo | 1536–1541 | Altar wall, Sistine Chapel | Muscular Christ as judge; St. Bartholomew holds his flayed skin bearing Michelangelo’s face; critic Biagio da Cesena painted as Minos with donkey ears. Nudes later covered by Daniele da Volterra (“Il Braghettone,” the breeches-maker). | learn more |
| The School of Athens | Raphael | 1509–1511 | Stanza della Segnatura (Raphael Rooms), Apostolic Palace, Vatican | Plato (pointing up; often said to have Leonardo’s face) and Aristotle (hand level toward earth) at center; Heraclitus brooding in front (Michelangelo’s features); Raphael’s self-portrait at far right. | learn more |
| Sistine Madonna | Raphael | 1512 | Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden | Madonna on clouds between parted curtains; two famous bored cherubs (putti) leaning on the ledge below. | learn more |
| Venus of Urbino | Titian | 1538 | Uffizi, Florence | Reclining nude with a small dog; maids at a chest behind. Manet’s Olympia parodies it. | learn more |
| The Ambassadors | Hans Holbein the Younger | 1533 | National Gallery, London | Two French envoys with globes and instruments; a distorted anamorphic skull across the floor only appears from the side. | learn more |
| The Hunters in the Snow | Pieter Bruegel the Elder | 1565 | Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna | Weary hunters and dogs on a hill above a frozen valley with skaters; part of a series on the months or seasons. | learn more |
| Landscape with the Fall of Icarus | Attributed to Pieter Bruegel the Elder (perhaps a copy) | c. 1560s | Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels | A plowman ignores the tiny legs of Icarus splashing into the sea; subject of Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts.” | learn more |
| The Burial of the Count of Orgaz | El Greco | 1586–1588 | Church of Santo Tomé, Toledo, Spain | Saints Stephen and Augustine lower the armored count into his tomb; heaven opens in the upper half. | learn more |
| The Calling of Saint Matthew | Caravaggio | 1599–1600 | Contarelli Chapel, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome | Shaft of light follows Christ’s pointing hand (echoing Adam’s in the Sistine ceiling) toward tax collectors counting coins at a table. | learn more |
| Judith Slaying Holofernes | Artemisia Gentileschi | c. 1620 (earlier version c. 1612–13) | Uffizi, Florence (earlier version: Capodimonte, Naples) | Two women pin down and behead the Assyrian general; spurting blood; often read in light of her own trial testimony. | learn more |
| The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp | Rembrandt | 1632 | Mauritshuis, The Hague | Surgeon demonstrating the forearm muscles of a corpse to Amsterdam guild members. | learn more |
| The Night Watch | Rembrandt | 1642 | Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam | Militia company of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq marching out; a glowing girl with a chicken; actually a daytime scene darkened by old varnish; trimmed in 1715. | learn more |
| Las Meninas | Diego Velázquez | 1656 | Prado, Madrid | Infanta Margarita Teresa with maids of honor and a dwarf; Velázquez at his easel; King Philip IV and Queen Mariana reflected in a back-wall mirror. | learn more |
| The Milkmaid | Johannes Vermeer | c. 1657–1658 | Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam | Kitchen maid pouring milk into a bowl beside bread, light from a left window. | learn more |
| Girl with a Pearl Earring | Johannes Vermeer | c. 1665 | Mauritshuis, The Hague | A tronie (character study), not a portrait: girl in a blue-and-yellow turban glancing over her shoulder; “Mona Lisa of the North”; Tracy Chevalier novel and 2003 film. | learn more |
| The Swing | Jean-Honoré Fragonard | 1767 | Wallace Collection, London | Young woman in a frothy pink dress kicks off a slipper toward her hidden admirer in the bushes. | learn more |
| The Blue Boy | Thomas Gainsborough | c. 1770 | Huntington Library, San Marino, California | Boy in a blue satin costume in the style of van Dyck; sold to the U.S. in 1921, causing a British outcry. | learn more |
| Watson and the Shark | John Singleton Copley | 1778 | National Gallery of Art, Washington (other versions in Boston and Detroit) | Boy attacked by a shark in Havana harbor while sailors try to rescue him. | learn more |
| Oath of the Horatii | Jacques-Louis David | 1784 | Louvre, Paris | Three Roman brothers salute swords held by their father; weeping women to the right; three arches. A manifesto of Neoclassicism. | learn more |
| The Death of Marat | Jacques-Louis David | 1793 | Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels | Revolutionary journalist Jean-Paul Marat slumped in his bathtub after being stabbed by Charlotte Corday; holds her letter. | learn more |
| The Third of May 1808 | Francisco Goya | 1814 | Prado, Madrid | Faceless French firing squad executing Spanish civilians; man in a white shirt flings his arms up in a Christ-like pose. | learn more |
| Wanderer above the Sea of Fog | Caspar David Friedrich | c. 1818 | Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg | Man in a dark coat seen from behind on a rocky peak above fog. | learn more |
| The Raft of the Medusa | Théodore Géricault | 1818–1819 | Louvre, Paris | Starving survivors of the 1816 wreck of the French frigate Méduse off West Africa wave at a distant ship; a political scandal under the restored monarchy. | learn more |
| Saturn Devouring His Son | Francisco Goya | c. 1819–1823 | Prado, Madrid | One of the Black Paintings Goya painted on the walls of his house (Quinta del Sordo, “House of the Deaf Man”). | learn more |
| The Hay Wain | John Constable | 1821 | National Gallery, London | Horse-drawn hay cart crossing the River Stour beside Willy Lott’s cottage, Suffolk. | learn more |
| Liberty Leading the People | Eugène Delacroix | 1830 | Louvre, Paris | Bare-breasted Liberty (Marianne) in a Phrygian cap raising the tricolor over barricades in the July Revolution of 1830; a boy with pistols (thought to inspire Hugo’s Gavroche). | learn more |
| The Great Wave off Kanagawa | Katsushika Hokusai | c. 1831 | Woodblock print; many impressions (Met, British Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, etc.) | Claw-like wave about to crash on three boats; tiny Mount Fuji in the distance; imported Prussian blue ink. | learn more |
| The Oxbow | Thomas Cole | 1836 | Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York | Connecticut River bend near Northampton, Massachusetts; storm wilderness on the left, cultivated farmland on the right; Cole painting at his easel. | learn more |
| The Fighting Temeraire | J. M. W. Turner | 1839 | National Gallery, London | Ghostly warship from Trafalgar towed by a smoky steam tug to be broken up at sunset; voted Britain’s favorite painting (2005); on the £20 note. | learn more |
| Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway | J. M. W. Turner | 1844 | National Gallery, London | Train roaring across Maidenhead Railway Bridge through rain; a hare runs ahead of it. | learn more |
| Kindred Spirits | Asher B. Durand | 1849 | Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas | Painter Thomas Cole and poet William Cullen Bryant on a ledge in the Catskills, painted as a memorial after Cole’s death. | learn more |
| A Burial at Ornans | Gustave Courbet | 1849–1850 | Musée d’Orsay, Paris | Huge canvas of an ordinary village funeral, treated with the scale of a history painting. | learn more |
| Washington Crossing the Delaware | Emanuel Leutze | 1851 | Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York | Washington standing heroically in a rowboat among ice floes, Dec. 25–26, 1776, before the Battle of Trenton. Inaccuracies: the Stars and Stripes flag did not exist yet; future president James Monroe holds it. | learn more |
| Ophelia | John Everett Millais | 1851–1852 | Tate Britain, London | Drowning Ophelia from Hamlet floating among carefully painted flowers; model Elizabeth Siddal. | learn more |
| The Gleaners | Jean-François Millet | 1857 | Musée d’Orsay, Paris | Three peasant women bent over, picking up leftover grain after the harvest. | learn more |
| Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass) | Édouard Manet | 1863 | Musée d’Orsay, Paris | Nude woman picnicking with two clothed men stares at the viewer; scandal of the Salon des Refusés. | learn more |
| Olympia | Édouard Manet | 1863 (shown 1865) | Musée d’Orsay, Paris | Reclining nude courtesan with a black cat at her feet and a maid bringing flowers; model Victorine Meurent; parody of Titian’s Venus of Urbino. | learn more |
| Whistler’s Mother (Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1) | James McNeill Whistler | 1871 | Musée d’Orsay, Paris (bought by the French state in 1891) | Anna McNeill Whistler seated in profile; appeared on a 1934 U.S. Mother’s Day stamp. | learn more |
| Impression, Sunrise | Claude Monet | 1872 | Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris | Orange sun over hazy blue Le Havre harbor; named Impressionism at the 1874 exhibition. | learn more |
| The Gross Clinic | Thomas Eakins | 1875 | Philadelphia Museum of Art and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (jointly owned) | Dr. Samuel Gross, bloody scalpel in hand, lectures during surgery while the patient’s mother covers her eyes. | learn more |
| Bal du moulin de la Galette | Pierre-Auguste Renoir | 1876 | Musée d’Orsay, Paris | Sunday dance in an open-air Montmartre café with dappled sunlight. | learn more |
| Luncheon of the Boating Party | Pierre-Auguste Renoir | 1880–1881 | Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. | Friends on a balcony at the Maison Fournaise on the Seine; future wife Aline Charigot plays with a little dog; Gustave Caillebotte sits backward on a chair. | learn more |
| A Bar at the Folies-Bergère | Édouard Manet | 1882 | Courtauld Gallery, London | Barmaid facing us; the mirror behind her shows a reflection that doesn’t quite line up; Manet’s last major work. | learn more |
| Madame X | John Singer Sargent | 1884 | Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York | Virginie Gautreau in a black gown with pale skin; originally painted with a fallen strap, which caused a scandal; Sargent repainted it. | learn more |
| A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte | Georges Seurat | 1884–1886 | Art Institute of Chicago | Pointillist Parisians along the Seine; woman with a parasol walking a monkey; woman fishing. | learn more |
| Sunflowers (series) | Vincent van Gogh | 1888–1889 | Versions in National Gallery London, Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam, Neue Pinakothek Munich, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Tokyo | Yellow sunflowers in a vase, painted in Arles to decorate the Yellow House for Gauguin. | learn more |
| The Starry Night | Vincent van Gogh | 1889 | Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York | Swirling night sky and crescent moon, flame-like cypress, village and church steeple; view from his asylum window at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. | learn more |
| The Card Players (series) | Paul Cézanne | 1890s | Five versions: Musée d’Orsay, Met, Courtauld, Barnes Foundation, and a private collection (Qatar royal family) | Provençal peasants absorbed in cards; one version sold privately for a reported $250 million. | learn more |
| The Scream | Edvard Munch | 1893 | National Museum of Norway, Oslo (painted version); other versions at the Munch Museum, Oslo | Skull-faced figure on a bridge clutching its face under a blood-red sky above the Oslofjord. | learn more |
| Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? | Paul Gauguin | 1897–1898 | Museum of Fine Arts, Boston | Huge Tahitian frieze read right to left from infancy to old age; title written in French in the upper corner. | learn more |
| Les Demoiselles d’Avignon | Pablo Picasso | 1907 | MoMA, New York | Five angular nude women (prostitutes from Carrer d’Avinyó in Barcelona), two with African-mask faces; proto-Cubist. | learn more |
| The Kiss | Gustav Klimt | 1907–1908 | Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna | Embracing couple wrapped in a gold-leaf cloak on a flowery cliff edge; his cloak has rectangles, hers circles. | learn more |
| Dance | Henri Matisse | 1909–1910 | Hermitage, St. Petersburg (the 1910 version); first version (1909) at MoMA | Five red nude figures dancing in a ring on a green hill against blue sky; commissioned by Russian collector Sergei Shchukin. | learn more |
| Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 | Marcel Duchamp | 1912 | Philadelphia Museum of Art | Overlapping brown planes showing motion; mocked at the 1913 Armory Show as “an explosion in a shingle factory.” | learn more |
| Black Square | Kazimir Malevich | 1915 | Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow (first version) | A black square on white, hung in the corner like an icon at the “0,10” exhibition. | learn more |
| Fountain | Marcel Duchamp | 1917 | Original lost; 1964 replicas in Tate Modern, SFMOMA, and elsewhere | Porcelain urinal turned on its back and signed “R. Mutt 1917”; the most famous readymade. | learn more |
| The Treachery of Images | René Magritte | 1929 | Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) | A pipe above the caption “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (“This is not a pipe”). | learn more |
| American Gothic | Grant Wood | 1930 | Art Institute of Chicago | Stern Iowa farmer with a pitchfork beside his daughter (not wife) in front of a house with a Carpenter Gothic window (Eldon, Iowa). | learn more |
| The Persistence of Memory | Salvador Dalí | 1931 | MoMA, New York | Melting pocket watches (one swarmed by ants) in a dreamlike Catalan coastal landscape; a strange fleshy face-like form in the center. | learn more |
| Detroit Industry Murals | Diego Rivera | 1932–1933 | Detroit Institute of Arts | 27 fresco panels of workers at Ford’s River Rouge plant; commissioned with Edsel Ford’s support. | learn more |
| Guernica | Pablo Picasso | 1937 | Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid | Black, white and gray chaos: screaming horse, bull, mother with dead child, electric bulb; protests the April 1937 bombing of the Basque town by German and Italian planes during the Spanish Civil War. Shown at the 1937 Paris Exposition; kept at MoMA until Spain returned to democracy (1981). | learn more |
| Tragic Prelude | John Steuart Curry | 1937–1942 | Kansas State Capitol, Topeka | Giant John Brown, Bible in one hand and rifle in the other, with a tornado and prairie fire behind and fallen Civil War soldiers at his feet. | learn more |
| The Two Fridas | Frida Kahlo | 1939 | Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City | Two Fridas holding hands, one in a European dress and one in Tehuana dress, their exposed hearts joined by a vein; painted during her divorce from Rivera. | learn more |
| The Migration Series | Jacob Lawrence | 1940–1941 | Split: MoMA (even panels) and Phillips Collection (odd panels) | 60 small panels on the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to the North. | learn more |
| Nighthawks | Edward Hopper | 1942 | Art Institute of Chicago | Late-night diner seen through a big curved window; no visible door; three customers and a server under harsh light. | learn more |
| Broadway Boogie Woogie | Piet Mondrian | 1942–1943 | MoMA, New York | Grid of small yellow, red and blue blocks evoking Manhattan streets and jazz; no black lines. | learn more |
| Christina’s World | Andrew Wyeth | 1948 | MoMA, New York | Woman in a pink dress lying in a field, reaching toward a gray farmhouse; neighbor Christina Olson, who could not walk, in Cushing, Maine. | learn more |
| Autumn Rhythm (Number 30) | Jackson Pollock | 1950 | Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York | Huge web of black, white and brown poured paint; Lavender Mist (same year) is at the National Gallery of Art. | learn more |
| Campbell’s Soup Cans | Andy Warhol | 1962 | MoMA, New York | 32 canvases, one for each soup variety then sold. | learn more |
| Marilyn Diptych | Andy Warhol | 1962 | Tate Modern, London | 50 silkscreened Marilyn Monroes, color on the left and fading black-and-white on the right; made after her death. | learn more |
| Whaam! | Roy Lichtenstein | 1963 | Tate Modern, London | Two-panel comic-book fighter jet firing a rocket that explodes an enemy plane. | learn more |
| The Problem We All Live With | Norman Rockwell | 1963 (published in Look, 1964) | Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Massachusetts | Six-year-old Ruby Bridges escorted by U.S. marshals to integrate a New Orleans school (1960); a thrown tomato on the wall. Hung in the White House in 2011. | learn more |
| The Son of Man | René Magritte | 1964 | Private collection | Man in an overcoat and bowler hat whose face is hidden by a floating green apple. | learn more |
| Water Lilies (series, c. 250 paintings) | Claude Monet | 1896–1926 | Largest panels: Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris; others at MoMA, the Nelson-Atkins, Cleveland, St. Louis and more | His lily pond at Giverny, painted with increasingly loose, near-abstract strokes as his cataracts worsened. | learn more |
Museum shortcuts: Mona Lisa, Liberty, Raft of the Medusa, Oath of the Horatii → Louvre. Manet, Whistler’s Mother, Gleaners → Orsay. Las Meninas, Garden of Earthly Delights, Goya → Prado; Guernica → Reina Sofía. Birth of Venus, Venus of Urbino → Uffizi. Night Watch, Milkmaid → Rijksmuseum; Girl with a Pearl Earring → Mauritshuis. Starry Night, Persistence of Memory, Demoiselles → MoMA. American Gothic, Nighthawks, Grande Jatte → Art Institute of Chicago. Washington Crossing the Delaware, Madame X → Met. See Museums below. most-visited art museums
Three famous Kisses: Klimt’s gold painting (Belvedere, Vienna), Rodin’s marble sculpture of Paolo and Francesca (Musée Rodin), and Brancusi’s blocky stone sculpture. Rodin’s Kiss · Brancusi’s Kiss
Leonardo’s Last Supper is a wall painting in Milan, not in a museum. Dalí’s The Sacrament of the Last Supper (1955) is at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. learn more
Sculpture
↑ topAncient Greek and Roman
| Sculptor / work | Date | Key facts | More |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phidias | c. 480–430 BC | Oversaw the Parthenon sculptures under Pericles (the frieze and pediment marbles, many now in the British Museum as the “Elgin Marbles,” which Greece wants back). Made the colossal gold-and-ivory (chryselephantine) Athena Parthenos (lost; a full-size replica stands in the Parthenon replica in Nashville, Tennessee) and the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. | learn more · Athena Parthenos · Zeus at Olympia · Elgin Marbles |
| Myron – Discobolus (Discus Thrower) | c. 460–450 BC | Athlete coiled at the top of his throw; bronze original lost, known from Roman marble copies. | Myron · Discobolus |
| Polykleitos – Doryphoros (Spear Bearer) | c. 440 BC | Demonstrated his treatise, the Canon, on ideal mathematical proportions; textbook example of contrapposto (weight on one leg). Best copy is in Naples. | Polykleitos · Doryphoros |
| Praxiteles | 4th century BC | Aphrodite of Knidos, the first monumental fully nude female statue; Hermes and the Infant Dionysus (Olympia); graceful S-curve poses. | Praxiteles · Aphrodite of Knidos |
| Lysippos | 4th century BC | Court sculptor of Alexander the Great; slimmer proportions; Apoxyomenos (athlete scraping himself). | learn more |
| Laocoön and His Sons | c. 1st century BC–AD 1st century | Trojan priest and sons strangled by sea serpents (Virgil’s Aeneid, Book II); by Rhodian sculptors Agesander, Athenodoros and Polydorus. Dug up in Rome in 1506 (Michelangelo was there); now in the Vatican Museums. Lessing’s essay Laocoön (1766) is named for it. | learn more |
| Venus de Milo (Aphrodite of Milos) | c. 150–125 BC | Hellenistic marble missing both arms; found on the island of Melos in 1820; Louvre. Attributed to Alexandros of Antioch. | learn more |
| Winged Victory of Samothrace (Nike) | c. 190 BC | Headless winged goddess landing on a ship’s prow, robes whipped by wind; top of the Daru staircase in the Louvre; found 1863. | learn more |
| Dying Gaul | Roman copy of a Hellenistic bronze (c. 230–220 BC) | Wounded Celtic warrior with a torc; Capitoline Museums, Rome; made for the kings of Pergamon. | learn more |
| Augustus of Prima Porta | 1st century AD | Emperor Augustus in armor, arm raised to speak, based on the Doryphoros; Cupid on a dolphin at his leg; Vatican Museums. | learn more |
Renaissance through the 19th century
| Sculptor | Dates | Key works and facts | More |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lorenzo Ghiberti | 1378–1455 | Won the famous 1401 competition (beating Brunelleschi) to make the north bronze doors of the Florence Baptistery; then made the east doors, which Michelangelo called the “Gates of Paradise” (1425–1452): ten gilded Old Testament panels using perspective. Originals now in the cathedral museum; copies on the building. | learn more · Baptistery |
| Donatello | c. 1386–1466 | Bronze David (1440s, Bargello): first freestanding nude male statue since antiquity; boyish David in a hat standing on Goliath’s head. Gattamelata (Padua, 1453): first life-size bronze equestrian statue since ancient Rome. Also wooden Penitent Magdalene, St. Mark (Orsanmichele). | learn more · David · Gattamelata |
| Michelangelo | 1475–1564 | Pietà (1498–1499, St. Peter’s Basilica): Mary holding the dead Christ; his only signed work (on Mary’s sash). David (1501–1504, Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence): 17-foot marble, carved from a block others had abandoned; shown before the fight; a copy stands in the Piazza della Signoria. Moses (c. 1513–1515, San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome): for the tomb of Julius II; has horns from a Latin Vulgate translation of “rays of light.” Also the Medici Chapel tombs (Night, Day, Dawn, Dusk) and the unfinished Slaves (Prisoners). | David · Pietà · Moses |
| Benvenuto Cellini | 1500–1571 | Mannerist goldsmith-sculptor: bronze Perseus with the Head of Medusa (Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence); gold Salt Cellar for Francis I (Vienna); boastful Autobiography. | learn more |
| Gian Lorenzo Bernini | 1598–1680 | The Baroque genius of Rome. Apollo and Daphne (Daphne turning into a laurel tree) and his own David (mid-throw, biting his lip), both in the Borghese Gallery; Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (Cornaro Chapel, Santa Maria della Vittoria): an angel with a golden spear, staged like theater; the bronze baldacchino (canopy) over the altar of St. Peter’s; the colonnade around St. Peter’s Square (“arms of the Church”); Fountain of the Four Rivers (Piazza Navona: Nile, Ganges, Danube, Río de la Plata). | learn more · St. Teresa · Apollo and Daphne · Baldacchino · Four Rivers |
| Jean-Antoine Houdon | 1741–1828 | French Neoclassical portraitist: life-size George Washington (Virginia State Capitol, Richmond); Voltaire Seated; busts of Franklin, Jefferson and Lafayette. | learn more |
| Antonio Canova | 1757–1822 | Leading Neoclassical sculptor: Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss (Louvre); Paolina Borghese as Venus Victrix (Napoleon’s sister reclining half-nude, Borghese Gallery); The Three Graces; a nude Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker (Apsley House, London). | learn more · Psyche |
| Auguste Rodin | 1840–1917 | Father of modern sculpture; rough, expressive surfaces. The Gates of Hell (from Dante’s Inferno; commissioned 1880 for a museum never built) spun off The Thinker (originally “The Poet,” meant to be Dante) and The Kiss (Paolo and Francesca). The Burghers of Calais (six citizens offering their lives to England’s Edward III in 1347); Monument to Balzac; The Age of Bronze (so lifelike he was accused of casting a live model). Student and lover: Camille Claudel. Musée Rodin, Paris. | learn more · Thinker · Gates of Hell · Burghers |
| Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi | 1834–1904 | Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World), dedicated Oct. 28, 1886; copper skin over an iron framework engineered by Gustave Eiffel; pedestal by Richard Morris Hunt; Emma Lazarus’s sonnet “The New Colossus” on a plaque. Also the Lion of Belfort. | learn more · Statue of Liberty |
| Augustus Saint-Gaudens | 1848–1907 | Irish-born American: Robert Gould Shaw Memorial (54th Massachusetts, Boston Common); Adams Memorial (“Grief,” Rock Creek Cemetery, D.C.); Sherman and Farragut monuments in New York; designed the 1907 $20 “double eagle” gold coin, often called the most beautiful U.S. coin. | learn more · Shaw Memorial · double eagle |
| Daniel Chester French | 1850–1931 | The Minute Man (1874–75, Concord, Massachusetts) and the seated Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial (dedicated 1922; carved by the Piccirilli Brothers; building by Henry Bacon). Also Alma Mater (Columbia) and the John Harvard statue. | learn more · Lincoln statue · Minute Man |
| Gutzon Borglum | 1867–1941 | Mount Rushmore (1927–1941, Black Hills, South Dakota): Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Lincoln, each head about 60 feet tall; finished by his son Lincoln Borglum. Earlier began the Stone Mountain carving in Georgia before being fired. (The nearby Crazy Horse Memorial, begun 1948, is by Korczak Ziolkowski and is unfinished.) | learn more · Mount Rushmore · Crazy Horse |
Bernini vs. Borromini. Both were Roman Baroque rivals. Bernini was the showman sculptor-architect (St. Teresa, Apollo and Daphne, the baldacchino, St. Peter’s colonnade, Four Rivers Fountain). Francesco Borromini was an architect only, known for complex curving geometry: San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza, the façade of Sant’Agnese in Agone facing Bernini’s fountain. The Trevi Fountain is by neither (Nicola Salvi). Borromini · San Carlo · Trevi
There are three famous Florentine Davids: Donatello’s bronze (boyish, hat, Bargello), Verrocchio’s bronze (Bargello) and Michelangelo’s giant marble (Accademia). Bernini’s David (Rome) is the one caught mid-throw. Donatello · Verrocchio · Michelangelo · Bernini
Modern and contemporary
| Sculptor | Dates | Key works and facts | More |
|---|---|---|---|
| Constantin Brâncuși | 1876–1957 | Romanian-French pioneer of abstraction: Bird in Space (U.S. customs tried to tax it as metal, not art; the 1928 court case Brancusi v. United States ruled it art); The Kiss; Sleeping Muse; Endless Column (Târgu Jiu, Romania). | learn more · Bird in Space |
| Alberto Giacometti | 1901–1966 | Swiss; stick-thin, elongated bronze figures with rough surfaces: Walking Man I, Pointing Man (both record auction prices); earlier Surrealist The Palace at 4 a.m. (MoMA). | learn more |
| Henry Moore | 1898–1986 | British; monumental reclining figures with holes (pierced forms); Nuclear Energy (University of Chicago, site of the first nuclear chain reaction); WWII drawings of Londoners sheltering in the Underground. The Nelson-Atkins in Kansas City has a large Henry Moore Sculpture Garden. | learn more |
| Barbara Hepworth | 1903–1975 | British (St Ives, Cornwall); smooth abstract pierced forms; Single Form at the United Nations in New York (memorial to Dag Hammarskjöld); died in a fire in her studio. | learn more |
| Alexander Calder | 1898–1976 | American inventor of the mobile (hanging, moving sculpture; name suggested by Duchamp) and the stabile (stationary; name from Jean Arp). Flamingo (Chicago Federal Plaza); Calder’s Circus (Whitney); huge mobile in the National Gallery’s East Building. | learn more · mobile |
| Louise Nevelson | 1899–1988 | Ukrainian-born American; wall-sized assemblages of found wood scraps in boxes, painted a single color (usually black): Sky Cathedral (MoMA). | learn more |
| Isamu Noguchi | 1904–1988 | Japanese-American; stone sculptures, gardens, Akari paper lamps, stage sets for Martha Graham. | learn more |
| Claes Oldenburg (with Coosje van Bruggen) | 1929–2022 | Pop sculptor of giant everyday objects: Spoonbridge and Cherry (Minneapolis); Clothespin (Philadelphia); four giant Shuttlecocks (1994) on the lawn of the Nelson-Atkins, Kansas City. | learn more · Spoonbridge |
| Louise Bourgeois | 1911–2010 | French-American; giant spider sculptures called Maman (one outside the Guggenheim Bilbao). | learn more · Maman |
| Jeff Koons | b. 1955 | Shiny stainless-steel kitsch: Balloon Dog series; Rabbit (1986; sold for $91.1 million in 2019, a record for a living artist at auction); Puppy (flower-covered dog, Guggenheim Bilbao); porcelain Michael Jackson and Bubbles. | learn more · Balloon Dog |
| Anish Kapoor | b. 1954 | British-Indian; Cloud Gate (“The Bean,” Millennium Park, Chicago), a mirror-polished stainless-steel bean. | learn more · Cloud Gate |
| Maya Lin | b. 1959 | Designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1982, Washington, D.C.) as a 21-year-old Yale undergraduate: a black granite V cut into the earth listing over 58,000 names in the order they died. Also the Civil Rights Memorial (Montgomery, Alabama). Presidential Medal of Freedom, 2016. | learn more · Vietnam Veterans Memorial |
| Christo and Jeanne-Claude | 1935–2020 / 1935–2009 | Wrapped and draped huge sites: Wrapped Reichstag (Berlin, 1995), The Gates (Central Park, 2005), L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped (2021, completed after Christo’s death). | learn more |
Kansas sculpture
- Ad Astra (2002) by Richard Bergen of Salina: a 22-foot bronze Kansa (Kaw) warrior aiming an arrow at the North Star, placed atop the dome of the Kansas State Capitol in October 2002. The name comes from the state motto Ad astra per aspera (“To the stars through difficulties”). learn more
- The Keeper of the Plains (1974) by Kiowa-Comanche artist Blackbear Bosin: a 44-foot steel figure at the meeting of the Arkansas and Little Arkansas Rivers in Wichita. learn more · Bosin
- Garden of Eden, Lucas, Kansas: folk-art concrete sculptures (Adam and Eve, the Crucifixion, political scenes) built from 1907 by Civil War veteran S. P. Dinsmoor, whose body lies in a glass-topped coffin in the mausoleum. Lucas calls itself the “Grassroots Art Capital of Kansas.” learn more
- Madonna of the Trail (1928), Council Grove: one of twelve identical pioneer-mother statues placed by the Daughters of the American Revolution along the National Old Trails Road (sculptor August Leimbach). learn more
Architecture
↑ topThe Greek orders: how to tell them apart
| Order | Capital (top) | Shaft and base | Feel | Famous examples | More |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Doric | Plain cushion (echinus) with a square slab (abacus) | Thick fluted shaft, no base; frieze of alternating triglyphs and metopes | Sturdy, plain, “masculine” | Parthenon; Temple of Hephaestus (Athens); temples at Paestum; Lincoln Memorial | learn more |
| Ionic | Scrolls (volutes) like a rolled-up paper | Slimmer shaft on a base; continuous frieze | Elegant, “feminine” | Erechtheion (with its Porch of the Maidens, the caryatids); Temple of Athena Nike; Temple of Artemis at Ephesus; Jefferson Memorial | learn more |
| Corinthian | Acanthus leaves with small scrolls | Slender shaft on a base | Most ornate; favored by the Romans | Temple of Olympian Zeus (Athens); Pantheon portico (Rome); U.S. Supreme Court Building | learn more |
Memory aid: Doric = Dull (plain), Ionic = I see scrolls (“eyes”), Corinthian = Crowded with leaves. The Romans added the plain Tuscan and the mixed Composite orders. The Colosseum stacks Tuscan/Doric, Ionic and Corinthian on its three main levels. Other vocabulary: entablature (architrave + frieze + cornice), pediment (triangular gable), entasis (slight bulge of a column), stylobate (top step). learn more
Styles in order
| Style | Dates | Recognition features | Examples | More |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Egyptian & Mesopotamian | c. 3000–30 BC | Massive stone, post-and-lintel, pyramids, obelisks, hypostyle halls (forests of columns); Mesopotamian ziggurats of mud brick. | Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara (by Imhotep, c. 2650 BC; first monumental stone building); Great Pyramid of Giza (Khufu; only surviving Ancient Wonder); Karnak’s Hypostyle Hall; Abu Simbel (Ramesses II; moved in the 1960s for the Aswan High Dam); Hatshepsut’s temple at Deir el-Bahari; Ziggurat of Ur | learn more · Djoser · Great Pyramid · Abu Simbel |
| Greek | c. 600–31 BC | Temples with columns in the three orders; harmony and proportion; optical refinements (the Parthenon has almost no straight lines). | Parthenon (447–432 BC; architects Ictinus and Callicrates; for Athena; on the Acropolis); Erechtheion; theater at Epidaurus | Parthenon · Erechtheion |
| Roman | c. 500 BC – AD 476 | Round arch, barrel and groin vaults, dome, and concrete (made with volcanic pozzolana); aqueducts, basilicas, baths, amphitheaters, triumphal arches. | Pantheon (rebuilt under Hadrian c. AD 113–125; inscription credits Agrippa; still the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome; open oculus); Colosseum (Flavian Amphitheatre, finished AD 80 under Titus); Pont du Gard; Arch of Titus; Baths of Caracalla | learn more · Pantheon · Colosseum · concrete |
| Byzantine | c. 330–1453 | Central domes over square spaces supported by pendentives (curved triangles); gold mosaics inside; plain brick outside; Greek-cross plans. | Hagia Sophia, Constantinople (532–537, Justinian; architects Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus; mosque after 1453, museum 1934, mosque again 2020); San Vitale, Ravenna; St. Mark’s Basilica, Venice | learn more · Hagia Sophia · pendentive |
| Romanesque | c. 1000–1150 | “Roman-like”: round arches, very thick walls, small windows, barrel vaults, massive piers; dark interiors; carved tympanums over doors. Pilgrimage churches. Called Norman in England. | Pisa Cathedral and its Leaning Tower (begun 1173); Durham Cathedral; Sainte-Foy, Conques; Speyer Cathedral; Santiago de Compostela; Tower of London’s White Tower | learn more · Pisa · Durham |
| Gothic | c. 1140–1500 | Pointed arch, ribbed vault, flying buttress → thin walls, height, huge stained-glass windows and rose windows; gargoyles (water spouts). Born when Abbot Suger rebuilt the choir of the Abbey of Saint-Denis near Paris (1140–1144). “Gothic” began as a Renaissance insult meaning barbaric. | Chartres (famous blue glass, mismatched spires); Notre-Dame de Paris (begun 1163; burned April 15, 2019; reopened December 2024); Reims (French coronations); Amiens; Sainte-Chapelle (Louis IX); Cologne; Salisbury (England’s tallest spire); Westminster Abbey; Milan Cathedral | learn more · Saint-Denis · Suger · Chartres · Notre-Dame · flying buttress |
| Renaissance | c. 1400–1600 | Revival of Roman forms: symmetry, proportion, the orders, round arches, domes, centralized plans. | Brunelleschi’s dome on Florence Cathedral (Santa Maria del Fiore, 1420–1436; double shell, herringbone brick, built without wooden centering); Brunelleschi’s Foundling Hospital; Alberti’s façade of Santa Maria Novella; Bramante’s Tempietto (Rome) and first plan for new St. Peter’s; Palladio’s Villa Rotonda (Vicenza) and his Four Books of Architecture (1570), which inspired Jefferson | learn more · Florence dome · Tempietto · Villa Rotonda · Palladianism |
| Baroque | c. 1600–1750 | Drama and movement: curving, rippling façades, ovals, grand axes, rich ornament, light effects, theatrical plazas. | St. Peter’s Basilica (Michelangelo’s dome; Maderno’s façade; Bernini’s colonnade and baldacchino); Versailles (Le Vau, Hardouin-Mansart’s Hall of Mirrors, Le Nôtre’s gardens); Borromini’s San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane; Wren’s St. Paul’s Cathedral, London (1675–1710); Blenheim Palace; Trevi Fountain | learn more · St. Peter’s · Versailles · St. Paul’s |
| Neoclassical / Greek Revival / Federal | c. 1750–1850 (revived for U.S. memorials into the 1940s) | Temple fronts with columns and pediments; domes; white stone; associated with democracy and republics. | Monticello (Jefferson; on the nickel); Virginia State Capitol (Jefferson, modeled on the Maison Carrée in Nîmes); UVA Rotunda (half-scale Pantheon); U.S. Capitol (William Thornton’s design; Latrobe, Bulfinch; cast-iron dome by Thomas U. Walter, 1855–1866); White House (James Hoban); Lincoln Memorial (Henry Bacon); Panthéon, Paris; Brandenburg Gate; British Museum | learn more · Monticello · U.S. Capitol · White House · Lincoln Memorial |
| Gothic Revival | c. 1740s–1900s | Pointed arches, spires, tracery and pinnacles on 19th-century buildings; in the U.S. also wooden “Carpenter Gothic” (the window in American Gothic). | Palace of Westminster (Houses of Parliament), London (Charles Barry and A. W. N. Pugin, rebuilt after an 1834 fire; “Big Ben” is the bell in the Elizabeth Tower); St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York (James Renwick Jr.); Washington National Cathedral; Woolworth Building (“Cathedral of Commerce,” 1913) | learn more · Westminster · Big Ben |
| Richardsonian Romanesque | c. 1870–1900 | Heavy rough-cut stone, wide round arches, squat towers; common in Midwestern courthouses and train depots. | H. H. Richardson’s Trinity Church, Boston (1877); Allegheny County Courthouse, Pittsburgh | learn more · Trinity Church |
| Beaux-Arts | c. 1880–1930 | Taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris: grand, symmetrical classical buildings with heavy sculpture and ornament; the “City Beautiful” movement. | Palais Garnier (Paris Opéra); 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition “White City” (Daniel Burnham); Grand Central Terminal; New York Public Library main branch; original Penn Station (demolished 1963, sparking historic preservation); Union Station, Kansas City (1914) | learn more · Palais Garnier · White City · Grand Central · KC Union Station |
| Chicago School | c. 1880–1910 | Early steel-frame skyscrapers built after the Great Chicago Fire (1871), made practical by Otis’s safety elevator; “Chicago windows” (large fixed pane flanked by two opening sashes). Louis Sullivan: “form follows function.” | Home Insurance Building (William Le Baron Jenney, 1885; often called the first skyscraper; demolished 1931); Sullivan’s Wainwright Building (St. Louis) and Guaranty Building (Buffalo); Burnham and Root’s Monadnock Building and Rookery | learn more · Home Insurance · Sullivan · form follows function |
| Prairie School / Organic | c. 1900–1920 (Wright active to 1959) | Strong horizontal lines, low hipped roofs with deep overhangs, bands of windows, open floor plans around a central hearth, natural materials; “organic architecture” in harmony with the site. | Frank Lloyd Wright: Robie House (Chicago); Fallingwater (1936–1939, built over a waterfall on Bear Run, Pennsylvania, for the Kaufmann family); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, 1959, spiral ramp); Taliesin (Wisconsin) and Taliesin West (Arizona); Imperial Hotel, Tokyo (survived the 1923 earthquake). Kansas: the Henry J. Allen House in Wichita (1915–1918), built for the newspaper publisher and later governor, is one of Wright’s last Prairie houses; Wright also designed the Corbin Education Center at Wichita State University. | learn more · Wright · Fallingwater · Guggenheim · Robie House · Allen House |
| Art Deco | c. 1920–1940 | Named after the 1925 Paris Exposition des Arts Décoratifs. Geometric zigzags, chevrons, sunbursts, stepped setbacks, shiny metal and luxury materials; later Streamline Moderne curves. | Chrysler Building (William Van Alen, 1930; stainless-steel crown, hubcap and eagle ornaments); Empire State Building (Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, 1931; world’s tallest until 1970); Rockefeller Center; Radio City Music Hall; Miami Beach hotels; Christ the Redeemer (Rio, 1931); Nebraska State Capitol; Kansas City’s Power & Light Building | learn more · Chrysler · Empire State |
| Bauhaus / International Style (Modernism) | c. 1920–1970 | No ornament (Adolf Loos, “Ornament and Crime”); flat roofs; white walls or glass curtain walls on steel frames; open plans. The name “International Style” comes from a 1932 MoMA show by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson. | Walter Gropius: Bauhaus building, Dessau. Mies van der Rohe (“less is more,” “God is in the details”): Barcelona Pavilion (1929), Farnsworth House, Seagram Building (New York, 1958). Le Corbusier (“a house is a machine for living in”; Five Points of Architecture): Villa Savoye (Poissy, 1931), Unité d’Habitation (Marseille), Notre-Dame du Haut (Ronchamp), city of Chandigarh, India. Philip Johnson’s Glass House; UN Headquarters | learn more · Seagram · Villa Savoye · Barcelona Pavilion · Ornament and Crime |
| Brutalism | c. 1950–1975 | From French béton brut (“raw concrete”): massive, blocky, exposed concrete; fortress-like. | Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation; Boston City Hall (1968); Barbican Estate and National Theatre, London; Habitat 67 (Montreal, Moshe Safdie); FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover Building | learn more · Boston City Hall · Habitat 67 |
| Postmodern | c. 1965–1995 | Reaction against glass boxes: playful historical quotations, bright color, irony. Robert Venturi answered Mies with “less is a bore” (Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, 1966). | Venturi’s Vanna Venturi House; Michael Graves’s Portland Building; Philip Johnson’s AT&T Building (550 Madison Ave., with a “Chippendale” top); Charles Moore’s Piazza d’Italia (New Orleans) | learn more · Venturi · Portland Building · 550 Madison |
| High-Tech | 1970s– | Structure and building services (pipes, ducts, elevators) displayed on the outside; steel and glass. | Centre Pompidou, Paris (Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, 1977; color-coded exterior pipes); Lloyd’s Building (Rogers); Norman Foster’s “Gherkin” (30 St Mary Axe) and Reichstag dome | learn more · Pompidou · Gherkin |
| Deconstructivism | 1980s– | Fragmented, tilted, curving, seemingly chaotic forms that break the box; computer-aided design. Named by a 1988 MoMA exhibition. | Frank Gehry: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (1997, titanium curves; the “Bilbao effect” of a building reviving a city); Walt Disney Concert Hall (Los Angeles); Dancing House (Prague). Zaha Hadid: Vitra Fire Station; MAXXI (Rome); London Aquatics Centre; Heydar Aliyev Center (Baku). Daniel Libeskind: Jewish Museum Berlin. Rem Koolhaas: CCTV Headquarters (Beijing), Seattle Central Library | learn more · Bilbao · Disney Hall · Dancing House · Jewish Museum |
Gothic structural chain: pointed arch → pushes weight more downward; ribbed vault → channels weight onto piers; flying buttress → braces the walls from outside; result: thin walls full of stained glass. If a question mentions “pendentives,” think Hagia Sophia/Byzantine; “oculus,” think Pantheon. rib vault · flying buttress · oculus
Famous architects
| Architect | Dates | Known for | More |
|---|---|---|---|
| Imhotep | c. 27th century BC | Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara; vizier to Djoser; later worshipped as a god of medicine. | learn more |
| Ictinus and Callicrates | 5th century BC | Architects of the Parthenon (with Phidias overseeing sculpture); Callicrates also built the Temple of Athena Nike; Ictinus, the Temple of Apollo at Bassae. | Ictinus · Callicrates |
| Vitruvius | 1st century BC | Roman author of De architectura (Ten Books on Architecture), the only major architecture treatise surviving from antiquity: a building needs firmitas, utilitas, venustas (“firmness, commodity and delight”). Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man illustrates his body proportions. | learn more · De architectura |
| Filippo Brunelleschi | 1377–1446 | Dome of Florence Cathedral; rediscovered linear perspective; Foundling Hospital, Pazzi Chapel, San Lorenzo. Lost the 1401 Baptistery doors competition to Ghiberti. | learn more |
| Leon Battista Alberti | 1404–1472 | Humanist author of On Painting and On the Art of Building; façade of Santa Maria Novella; Palazzo Rucellai; Sant’Andrea, Mantua. | learn more |
| Donato Bramante | 1444–1514 | Tempietto in Rome; original Greek-cross design for the new St. Peter’s Basilica (1506) for Julius II. | learn more |
| Michelangelo | 1475–1564 | Dome of St. Peter’s (completed after his death by Giacomo della Porta); Laurentian Library; Piazza del Campidoglio. | learn more |
| Andrea Palladio | 1508–1580 | Villas around Vicenza (Villa Rotonda); San Giorgio Maggiore (Venice); Four Books of Architecture; the “Palladian window”; huge influence in England and on Jefferson. | learn more |
| Sir Christopher Wren | 1632–1723 | St. Paul’s Cathedral and some 50 London churches rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1666; Royal Observatory, Greenwich. Also an astronomer and Royal Society founder. Epitaph in St. Paul’s: “Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you.” | learn more |
| Thomas Jefferson | 1743–1826 | Monticello; University of Virginia (“Academical Village” with the Rotunda); Virginia State Capitol. Palladian and Roman models. | learn more · Monticello |
| Pierre Charles L’Enfant | 1754–1825 | French-born engineer who drew the 1791 plan of Washington, D.C.: a street grid cut by diagonal avenues radiating from the Capitol and White House. Dismissed in 1792; Andrew Ellicott (with Benjamin Banneker on the boundary survey) carried on. | learn more · L’Enfant Plan |
| Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann | 1809–1891 | Prefect (not an architect) who rebuilt Paris for Napoleon III (1853–1870): wide boulevards, uniform cream-stone apartment blocks, parks and sewers. | learn more |
| Gustave Eiffel | 1832–1923 | Engineer: Eiffel Tower (1887–1889, for the 1889 World’s Fair marking the Revolution’s centennial; world’s tallest structure until the Chrysler Building); internal frame of the Statue of Liberty. | learn more · Eiffel Tower |
| Antoni Gaudí | 1852–1926 | Catalan Modernisme in Barcelona: the Sagrada Família basilica (begun 1882, still under construction a century after Gaudí was killed by a tram), Casa Batlló, Casa Milà (“La Pedrera”), Park Güell. Organic, melting, mosaic-covered forms. | learn more · Sagrada Família · Casa Batlló |
| Louis Sullivan | 1856–1924 | “Father of skyscrapers”; “form follows function”; Wainwright and Guaranty buildings; Wright’s mentor (“Lieber Meister”). | learn more |
| Frank Lloyd Wright | 1867–1959 | Prairie School and “organic architecture”: Fallingwater, Guggenheim, Robie House, Taliesin, Usonian houses; Allen House in Wichita. Born in Richland Center, Wisconsin. | learn more |
| Walter Gropius | 1883–1969 | Founded the Bauhaus (1919); Bauhaus Dessau building; later led Harvard’s architecture school. | learn more |
| Ludwig Mies van der Rohe | 1886–1969 | “Less is more”; Barcelona Pavilion and Barcelona Chair; Seagram Building; Farnsworth House; Crown Hall at IIT (Chicago); last Bauhaus director. | learn more |
| Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret) | 1887–1965 | Swiss-French; Villa Savoye; Five Points (pilotis, free plan, free façade, ribbon windows, roof garden); Unité d’Habitation; Ronchamp chapel; planned Chandigarh. | learn more |
| Eero Saarinen | 1910–1961 | Finnish-American; Gateway Arch, St. Louis (designed 1947–48, built 1963–1965; 630 feet tall and wide; stainless-steel catenary curve; finished after his death); TWA Flight Center (JFK Airport); Dulles Airport terminal; Tulip chair. | learn more · Gateway Arch |
| Louis Kahn | 1901–1974 | Salk Institute (La Jolla); Kimbell Art Museum (Fort Worth); National Assembly of Bangladesh (Dhaka). | learn more |
| I. M. Pei | 1917–2019 | Chinese-American; glass Louvre Pyramid (1989); East Building of the National Gallery of Art (1978); Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Cleveland); Bank of China Tower (Hong Kong); JFK Presidential Library. | learn more · Louvre Pyramid |
| Jørn Utzon | 1918–2008 | Danish; Sydney Opera House (won the 1957 competition; quit in 1966 amid disputes and never saw it finished; opened 1973; sail- or shell-shaped roofs). | learn more · Sydney Opera House |
| Frank Gehry | b. 1929 | Canadian-American Deconstructivist: Guggenheim Bilbao; Walt Disney Concert Hall; Dancing House; his own crumpled Santa Monica house; Fondation Louis Vuitton (Paris). | learn more |
| Zaha Hadid | 1950–2016 | Iraqi-British “Queen of the Curve”; first woman to win the Pritzker Prize (2004); London Aquatics Centre, MAXXI, Heydar Aliyev Center, Guangzhou Opera House. | learn more |
| Renzo Piano | b. 1937 | Italian; Centre Pompidou (with Richard Rogers); The Shard (London); New York Times Building; new Whitney Museum (2015); Art Institute of Chicago’s Modern Wing; Menil Collection (Houston). | learn more · The Shard |
| Rem Koolhaas | b. 1944 | Dutch; firm OMA; CCTV Headquarters (Beijing); Seattle Central Library; Casa da Música (Porto); book Delirious New York. | learn more |
| Norman Foster | b. 1935 | British High-Tech: 30 St Mary Axe (“the Gherkin”); glass dome of the Reichstag, Berlin; HSBC Building, Hong Kong; Millau Viaduct (France). | learn more |
Pritzker Architecture Prize: founded 1979 by Jay and Cindy Pritzker (Hyatt Foundation); called the “Nobel Prize of architecture.” First winner: Philip Johnson (1979). First woman: Zaha Hadid (2004). Other winners include Pei (1983), Gehry (1989), Piano (1998), Foster (1999), Koolhaas (2000), Utzon (2003), Balkrishna Doshi (2018, first Indian) and Francis Kéré (2022, first African). The bronze medal bears Vitruvius’s words “firmness, commodity and delight.” learn more
Wren vs. Wright. Christopher Wren = 1600s London, St. Paul’s Cathedral. Frank Lloyd Wright = 1900s America, Fallingwater. Also: Eero Saarinen (son) designed the Gateway Arch; his father Eliel Saarinen designed Helsinki’s railway station. Eliel Saarinen
Kansas: the Kansas State Capitol in Topeka took 37 years to build (1866–1903); its copper-clad dome rises about 304 feet, which Kansans like to note is taller than the U.S. Capitol’s. Inside: Curry’s Tragic Prelude; on top: Ad Astra. learn more
Music
↑ topPeriods at a glance
| Period | Dates | Traits | Big names | More |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Medieval | c. 500–1400 | Gregorian chant (monophonic, Latin, unaccompanied); early polyphony (organum); troubadours; staff notation. | Hildegard of Bingen, Léonin, Pérotin, Machaut, Guido of Arezzo | learn more · Gregorian chant |
| Renaissance | c. 1400–1600 | Smooth vocal polyphony (Masses, motets, madrigals); printing spreads music. | Josquin des Prez, Palestrina, Tallis, Byrd, Monteverdi (early) | learn more |
| Baroque | c. 1600–1750 | Birth of opera; basso continuo (bass line plus harpsichord or organ); ornate counterpoint; concerto grosso, fugue, oratorio, suite; terraced dynamics. Ends with Bach’s death (1750). | Monteverdi, Purcell, Corelli, Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Telemann, Scarlatti | learn more |
| Classical | c. 1750–1820 | Clarity, balance, elegant melodies over simple accompaniment; sonata form; symphony, string quartet and piano sonata mature; the piano replaces the harpsichord; Vienna is the center. | Haydn, Mozart, early Beethoven, Gluck | learn more |
| Romantic | c. 1820–1900 | Emotion, bigger orchestras, virtuosos, program music (music that tells a story), art songs (lieder), nationalism, grand opera. | Beethoven (late), Schubert, Chopin, Liszt, Berlioz, Brahms, Wagner, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Dvořák, Mahler | learn more |
| 20th century & later | 1900– | Impressionism (Debussy, Ravel), atonality and the twelve-tone method (Schoenberg), primitivism (Stravinsky), neoclassicism, American nationalism, jazz, minimalism (Glass, Reich), film music. | Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Copland, Gershwin, Shostakovich, Bernstein, Glass, John Williams | learn more |
Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque composers
| Composer | Dates | Nationality | Key works | Quiz clue | More |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hildegard of Bingen | 1098–1179 | German | Ordo Virtutum (morality play with music); Symphonia chants | Benedictine abbess, mystic, writer on medicine; one of the earliest composers known by name; named a Doctor of the Church (2012). | learn more |
| Guillaume de Machaut | c. 1300–1377 | French | Messe de Nostre Dame | Earliest complete polyphonic setting of the Mass by one known composer; also a poet. | learn more |
| Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina | c. 1525–1594 | Italian | Pope Marcellus Mass (Missa Papae Marcelli) | Model of smooth Catholic polyphony; legend says he “saved” polyphonic church music at the Council of Trent by proving words could stay clear. | learn more |
| Thomas Tallis | c. 1505–1585 | English | Spem in alium (motet for 40 voices) | Served four Tudor monarchs; Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis uses his tune. | learn more |
| Claudio Monteverdi | 1567–1643 | Italian | L’Orfeo (1607); Vespers of 1610; madrigals; The Coronation of Poppea | Bridge from Renaissance to Baroque; L’Orfeo is the earliest opera still regularly performed (Peri’s Dafne, 1598, was the first, but is lost). | learn more · L’Orfeo |
| Henry Purcell | 1659–1695 | English | Dido and Aeneas (“Dido’s Lament”: “When I am laid in earth”); Abdelazer (theme used by Britten) | Greatest English Baroque composer; organist at Westminster Abbey. | learn more |
| Johann Pachelbel | 1653–1706 | German | Canon in D | The wedding favorite; a ground bass repeated under a canon for three violins. | learn more |
| Antonio Vivaldi | 1678–1741 | Italian (Venice) | The Four Seasons (four violin concertos with sonnets, 1725); Gloria; some 500 concertos | “The Red Priest” (red hair, ordained priest); taught at the Ospedale della Pietà, an orphanage for girls. | learn more · Four Seasons |
| Johann Sebastian Bach | 1685–1750 | German | Brandenburg Concertos (six, dedicated 1721 to the Margrave of Brandenburg); The Well-Tempered Clavier; Mass in B minor; St. Matthew Passion; Goldberg Variations; Toccata and Fugue in D minor; “Air on the G String”; cello suites; The Art of Fugue | Born in Eisenach; cantor of St. Thomas Church, Leipzig; master of the fugue; about 20 children (sons C. P. E. and J. C. Bach became composers); works numbered by BWV. Largely forgotten until Mendelssohn revived the St. Matthew Passion in 1829. | learn more · Brandenburg |
| George Frideric Handel | 1685–1759 | German-born, became British | Messiah (premiered in Dublin, 1742; “Hallelujah” chorus); Water Music (1717, for George I on the Thames); Music for the Royal Fireworks (1749); operas Rinaldo, Giulio Cesare | Same birth year as Bach (they never met); made the English oratorio; tradition says audiences stand for the “Hallelujah” chorus because King George II did. Buried in Westminster Abbey. | learn more · Messiah |
Classical period
| Composer | Dates | Nationality | Key works | Quiz clue | More |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Franz Joseph Haydn | 1732–1809 | Austrian | 104 symphonies incl. Surprise (No. 94), Farewell (No. 45), Military (No. 100), Clock (No. 101), the 12 London symphonies; oratorio The Creation; Trumpet Concerto; Emperor Quartet | “Father of the Symphony” and of the string quartet; decades as court composer for the Esterházy princes. Farewell: players leave one by one, hinting the prince should let them go home. The Emperor Quartet’s hymn tune became Germany’s national anthem. Taught Beethoven. | learn more · Surprise · Farewell |
| Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart | 1756–1791 | Austrian (Salzburg) | 41 symphonies (No. 41 Jupiter); Eine kleine Nachtmusik; operas The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, The Magic Flute; Requiem (unfinished; completed by Süssmayr); “Rondo alla Turca”; variations on “Twinkle, Twinkle” (Ah vous dirai-je, maman) | Child prodigy touring Europe at 6; works numbered by the Köchel (K.) catalog; librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte; died at 35. Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus imagines rival Antonio Salieri’s jealousy. | learn more |
| Ludwig van Beethoven | 1770–1827 | German (born Bonn), worked in Vienna | 9 symphonies (see table below); piano sonatas Moonlight (No. 14), Pathétique (No. 8), Appassionata; Für Elise; Emperor Piano Concerto (No. 5); only opera Fidelio; Missa solemnis; late string quartets; Grosse Fuge | Bridge from Classical to Romantic. Went deaf; wrote the despairing Heiligenstadt Testament (1802). At the 1824 premiere of the Ninth, he had to be turned around to see the applause. | learn more |
Romantic composers
| Composer | Dates | Nationality | Key works | Quiz clue | More |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Franz Schubert | 1797–1828 | Austrian | “Unfinished” Symphony (No. 8, B minor, two movements); “Great” C major Symphony (No. 9); Erlkönig (Goethe); song cycles Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise; Trout Quintet; Ave Maria | Over 600 lieder (art songs); friends’ parties called “Schubertiads”; died at 31. | learn more |
| Hector Berlioz | 1803–1869 | French | Symphonie fantastique (1830; “March to the Scaffold,” “Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath” quoting the Dies irae); Harold in Italy; The Damnation of Faust; Les Troyens; Grande Messe des morts | The Fantastique uses an idée fixe (recurring theme for the beloved), inspired by his obsession with actress Harriet Smithson; wrote a famous treatise on orchestration. | learn more · Symphonie fantastique |
| Felix Mendelssohn | 1809–1847 | German | A Midsummer Night’s Dream overture (age 17) and incidental music with the “Wedding March”; Hebrides (Fingal’s Cave) Overture; Italian (No. 4) and Scottish (No. 3) symphonies; Violin Concerto in E minor; oratorio Elijah | Revived Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (1829); his sister Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel was also a composer. | learn more |
| Frédéric Chopin | 1810–1849 | Polish, lived in Paris | Nocturnes; mazurkas and polonaises (Heroic Polonaise); Revolutionary Étude; Minute Waltz; Raindrop Prelude; Piano Sonata No. 2 with the Funeral March; ballades | “Poet of the piano”; wrote almost only for piano; affair with novelist George Sand; his heart is in Holy Cross Church, Warsaw. | learn more |
| Robert Schumann | 1810–1856 | German | Carnaval; Kinderszenen (“Träumerei”); Spring (No. 1) and Rhenish (No. 3) symphonies; Piano Concerto in A minor | Also a music critic who hailed Chopin (“Hats off, gentlemen, a genius!”) and Brahms; married pianist-composer Clara Wieck Schumann; jumped into the Rhine and died in an asylum. | learn more · Clara Schumann |
| Franz Liszt | 1811–1886 | Hungarian | Hungarian Rhapsodies (No. 2); Liebestraum No. 3; La campanella; Transcendental Études; Les préludes; Faust Symphony | Superstar pianist (“Lisztomania”); invented the symphonic poem and the solo piano recital; later took minor orders (“Abbé Liszt”); his daughter Cosima married Wagner. | learn more |
| Richard Wagner | 1813–1883 | German | Der Ring des Nibelungen (four operas: Das Rheingold, Die Walküre with the “Ride of the Valkyries,” Siegfried, Götterdämmerung); Tristan und Isolde; The Flying Dutchman; Tannhäuser; Lohengrin (“Bridal Chorus,” i.e., “Here Comes the Bride”); Die Meistersinger; Parsifal | “Music dramas”; leitmotifs; the ideal of the Gesamtkunstwerk (“total work of art”); the “Tristan chord.” Built his own Bayreuth Festival Theatre with support from King Ludwig II of Bavaria. Notorious antisemitic essays. | learn more · Ring cycle |
| Giuseppe Verdi | 1813–1901 | Italian | Nabucco (“Va, pensiero,” Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves); Rigoletto (“La donna è mobile”); Il trovatore (Anvil Chorus); La traviata; Aida; Otello; Falstaff; Requiem (for the writer Manzoni) | Born the same year as Wagner (1813). Hero of Italian unification: “VIVA VERDI” was code for “Viva Vittorio Emanuele Re D’Italia.” | learn more |
| Johann Strauss II | 1825–1899 | Austrian | The Blue Danube (1867); Tales from the Vienna Woods; operetta Die Fledermaus | “The Waltz King”; Blue Danube floats through 2001: A Space Odyssey. | learn more |
| Johannes Brahms | 1833–1897 | German (Hamburg), worked in Vienna | 4 symphonies; A German Requiem; Hungarian Dances (No. 5); “Lullaby” (Wiegenlied); Academic Festival Overture (student songs incl. “Gaudeamus igitur,” thanks for an honorary degree from Breslau); Violin Concerto; Variations on a Theme by Haydn | One of the “Three B’s” (Bach, Beethoven, Brahms); his First Symphony was nicknamed “Beethoven’s Tenth”; lifelong devotion to Clara Schumann. | learn more |
| Camille Saint-Saëns | 1835–1921 | French | The Carnival of the Animals (“The Swan”); Danse macabre (xylophone bones); Organ Symphony (No. 3); opera Samson et Dalila | Child prodigy; suppressed Carnival during his life except “The Swan.” | learn more |
| Georges Bizet | 1838–1875 | French | Carmen (“Habanera,” “Toreador Song”); The Pearl Fishers; L’Arlésienne suites | Died three months after Carmen’s lukewarm premiere, never knowing its success. | learn more |
| Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky | 1840–1893 | Russian | Ballets Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker (“Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” on celesta); 1812 Overture (cannons; quotes “La Marseillaise” and “God Save the Tsar”); Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture; Symphony No. 6 Pathétique; Piano Concerto No. 1; Violin Concerto; opera Eugene Onegin | Patroness Nadezhda von Meck supported him by letter for years but they never met; conducted at the opening of Carnegie Hall (1891); died nine days after the Pathétique premiere. The 1812 commemorates Russia’s defeat of Napoleon and is a U.S. Fourth of July staple. | learn more · 1812 Overture |
| Antonín Dvořák | 1841–1904 | Czech (Bohemian) | Symphony No. 9 From the New World (1893; Largo melody later became “Goin’ Home”); American String Quartet; Slavonic Dances; Cello Concerto; opera Rusalka (“Song to the Moon”); Humoresque | Directed the National Conservatory in New York (1892–95) and spent a summer in the Czech community of Spillville, Iowa; urged Americans to build on African American and Native American music. | learn more · New World |
| Edvard Grieg | 1843–1907 | Norwegian | Peer Gynt suites (for Ibsen’s play: “Morning Mood,” “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” “Anitra’s Dance,” “Solveig’s Song”); Piano Concerto in A minor; Holberg Suite; Lyric Pieces | Norwegian nationalist; home Troldhaugen near Bergen. | learn more · Peer Gynt |
| The Russian Five (“The Mighty Handful”) | 1860s–1900s | Russian | Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition (piano, 1874; orchestrated by Ravel; “The Great Gate of Kiev”), Night on Bald Mountain, opera Boris Godunov. Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade (1001 Nights), “Flight of the Bumblebee,” Capriccio espagnol. Borodin: Prince Igor (“Polovtsian Dances”), In the Steppes of Central Asia. Balakirev (leader): Islamey. César Cui. | Nationalist group, mostly amateurs: Borodin was a chemist, Rimsky-Korsakov a naval officer (later Stravinsky’s teacher), Mussorgsky a civil servant, Cui an army engineer. Pictures was a memorial for artist Viktor Hartmann. | learn more · Mussorgsky · Rimsky-Korsakov · Borodin |
| Bedřich Smetana | 1824–1884 | Czech | Má vlast (“My Country”) incl. Vltava (The Moldau); opera The Bartered Bride | Father of Czech music; went deaf like Beethoven. | learn more |
| Gustav Mahler | 1860–1911 | Austrian (born Bohemia) | Symphony No. 2 Resurrection; No. 8 “Symphony of a Thousand”; Das Lied von der Erde; Kindertotenlieder | Giant symphonies; also a star conductor (Vienna Court Opera, Met, New York Philharmonic). “A symphony must be like the world: it must embrace everything.” | learn more |
| Giacomo Puccini | 1858–1924 | Italian | La bohème; Tosca; Madama Butterfly; Turandot (“Nessun dorma”); Gianni Schicchi (“O mio babbino caro”); La fanciulla del West | Verismo (realism) opera; Turandot was left unfinished at his death and completed by Franco Alfano. | learn more |
| Richard Strauss | 1864–1949 | German | Tone poems Also sprach Zarathustra (opening of 2001: A Space Odyssey), Don Juan, Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks; operas Salome, Der Rosenkavalier; Four Last Songs | No relation to the Viennese waltz Strausses. | learn more |
| Jean Sibelius | 1865–1957 | Finnish | Finlandia (1899, protest against Russian rule); Valse triste; Violin Concerto; 7 symphonies | National hero of Finland; stopped composing for his last 30 years. | learn more |
| Edward Elgar | 1857–1934 | English | Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 (U.S. graduation march; “Land of Hope and Glory”); Enigma Variations (“Nimrod”); Cello Concerto | Each Enigma variation sketches one of his friends. | learn more |
| Sergei Rachmaninoff | 1873–1943 | Russian, later American | Piano Concertos No. 2 and No. 3 (“Rach 3”); Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (18th variation); Prelude in C-sharp minor; Isle of the Dead | Huge hands; one of the greatest pianists; left Russia after 1917. | learn more |
| Gioachino Rossini | 1792–1868 | Italian | The Barber of Seville (“Largo al factotum”: “Figaro! Figaro!”); William Tell Overture (the Lone Ranger theme) | Wrote nearly 40 operas, then essentially retired from opera at 37. | learn more |
| Niccolò Paganini | 1782–1840 | Italian | 24 Caprices for solo violin (No. 24 inspired Rachmaninoff, Brahms and Liszt) | Violin virtuoso rumored to have sold his soul to the devil. | learn more |
20th-century composers
| Composer | Dates | Nationality | Key works | Quiz clue | More |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Debussy | 1862–1918 | French | Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (1894, after Mallarmé’s poem); “Clair de lune” (Suite bergamasque); La Mer; Nocturnes; opera Pelléas et Mélisande; “Golliwogg’s Cakewalk” | “Impressionist” in music (he disliked the label): whole-tone scales, blurred harmonies, color over form. | learn more |
| Maurice Ravel | 1875–1937 | French | Boléro (1928; one long crescendo over a snare-drum rhythm); Daphnis et Chloé; Pavane for a Dead Princess; La Valse; orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition; Piano Concerto for the Left Hand | The left-hand concerto was for pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm in WWI. | learn more · Boléro |
| Erik Satie | 1866–1925 | French | Gymnopédies; Gnossiennes; ballet Parade | Eccentric, minimalist forerunner; odd performance directions. | learn more |
| Arnold Schoenberg | 1874–1951 | Austrian, later American | Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night); Pierrot lunaire (uses Sprechstimme, “speech-voice”); A Survivor from Warsaw; opera Moses und Aron | Pioneer of atonality and the twelve-tone technique (serialism, tone rows). Led the Second Viennese School with pupils Alban Berg (Wozzeck) and Anton Webern. Fled the Nazis to Los Angeles. | learn more · twelve-tone |
| Gustav Holst | 1874–1934 | English | The Planets (1914–1916): Mars, the Bringer of War; Venus; Mercury; Jupiter; Saturn; Uranus; Neptune, the Mystic (fades out with offstage women’s chorus); First Suite in E-flat for military band; St Paul’s Suite | The Planets has no Earth (astrological, not astronomical) and no Pluto (found 1930). Jupiter’s big tune became the hymn “I Vow to Thee, My Country.” | learn more · The Planets |
| Ralph Vaughan Williams | 1872–1958 | English | Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis; The Lark Ascending; Fantasia on Greensleeves | Collected English folk songs; edited The English Hymnal. | learn more |
| Igor Stravinsky | 1882–1971 | Russian, later French and American | Ballets for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), The Rite of Spring (1913); neoclassical Pulcinella, Symphony of Psalms; opera The Rake’s Progress (libretto by W. H. Auden, after Hogarth) | The Rite of Spring (pagan sacrifice; opens with a bassoon in its highest register; Nijinsky choreography) caused a near-riot at its Paris premiere on May 29, 1913. | learn more · Rite of Spring |
| Sergei Prokofiev | 1891–1953 | Russian (Soviet) | Peter and the Wolf (1936); ballet Romeo and Juliet (“Dance of the Knights”); Classical Symphony; Lieutenant Kijé (“Troika”); film score Alexander Nevsky; opera The Love for Three Oranges | Peter and the Wolf instruments: bird = flute, duck = oboe, cat = clarinet, grandfather = bassoon, wolf = French horns, Peter = strings, hunters’ guns = timpani and bass drum. Died the same day as Stalin (March 5, 1953). | learn more · Peter and the Wolf |
| Dmitri Shostakovich | 1906–1975 | Russian (Soviet) | 15 symphonies, incl. No. 5 (1937) and No. 7 Leningrad (1941); 15 string quartets; opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District; Festive Overture | Denounced in Pravda in 1936 (“Muddle Instead of Music”); the Fifth was billed as “a Soviet artist’s creative response to just criticism.” The Leningrad was performed inside the besieged city in 1942. | learn more · Leningrad |
| Benjamin Britten | 1913–1976 | English | The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra (variations on a Purcell theme); opera Peter Grimes; War Requiem (1962, for the new Coventry Cathedral, with Wilfred Owen’s poems); A Ceremony of Carols | The Young Person’s Guide introduces each orchestra section, then ends in a fugue. | learn more |
| Charles Ives | 1874–1954 | American | The Unanswered Question; Central Park in the Dark; Three Places in New England; Concord Sonata (movements: Emerson, Hawthorne, The Alcotts, Thoreau); Variations on “America” | Insurance executive who composed on the side; layered hymns, marches and band tunes in clashing keys (polytonality). Pulitzer Prize (1947) for Symphony No. 3. | learn more |
| Aaron Copland | 1900–1990 | American | Appalachian Spring (1944, for Martha Graham; variations on the Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts”; Pulitzer Prize); Rodeo (“Hoe-Down”); Billy the Kid; Fanfare for the Common Man (1942); Lincoln Portrait (with narrator); El Salón México | “Dean of American composers”; open, wide-spaced “prairie” sound; studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. “Hoe-Down” was the “Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner” ad music. | learn more · Appalachian Spring |
| George Gershwin | 1898–1937 | American | Rhapsody in Blue (1924, for Paul Whiteman’s band; opens with a clarinet glissando); An American in Paris (real taxi horns); folk opera Porgy and Bess (1935, “Summertime”); Concerto in F; many songs with brother Ira (lyrics) | Blended jazz and classical; died of a brain tumor at 38. | learn more · Rhapsody in Blue |
| Samuel Barber | 1910–1981 | American | Adagio for Strings; Knoxville: Summer of 1915; opera Vanessa | The Adagio is played at national mourning events (it was broadcast after the deaths of FDR and JFK). | learn more · Adagio |
| Leonard Bernstein | 1918–1990 | American | West Side Story (1957; Romeo and Juliet with the Jets and Sharks; lyrics by Stephen Sondheim; “Maria,” “Tonight,” “America”); Candide (overture); On the Town; Chichester Psalms; Mass (opened the Kennedy Center, 1971) | First American-born music director of the New York Philharmonic (1958–69); TV “Young People’s Concerts”; famous 1943 debut substituting for Bruno Walter. | learn more |
| John Cage | 1912–1992 | American | 4′33″ (1952; the performer sits silently, so the “music” is ambient sound); Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano | Chance (aleatory) music; invented the prepared piano (objects placed on the strings). | learn more · 4′33″ |
| Philip Glass / Steve Reich / John Adams | b. 1937 / b. 1936 / b. 1947 | American | Glass: opera Einstein on the Beach. Reich: Music for 18 Musicians, Different Trains. Adams: opera Nixon in China; On the Transmigration of Souls (9/11 memorial, Pulitzer 2003) | The minimalists: repeated patterns that shift slowly. | Glass · Reich · Adams |
| John Williams | b. 1932 | American | Film scores: Jaws (two-note shark motif), Star Wars, Close Encounters (five-note motif), Superman, E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, Harry Potter (“Hedwig’s Theme”); “Olympic Fanfare and Theme” (1984) | Five Academy Awards and more than 50 nominations; conducted the Boston Pops (1980–1993); frequent collaborator of Steven Spielberg. | learn more |
American popular, march and jazz traditions
| Musician | Dates | Known for | More |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stephen Foster | 1826–1864 | “Father of American music”: “Oh! Susanna,” “Camptown Races,” “My Old Kentucky Home” (Kentucky’s state song), “Old Folks at Home” (“Swanee River”), “Beautiful Dreamer.” | learn more |
| John Philip Sousa | 1854–1932 | “The March King”; led the U.S. Marine Band (“The President’s Own,” 1880–1892), then his own touring band. “The Stars and Stripes Forever” (national march of the U.S. since 1987), “Semper Fidelis” (Marine Corps march), “The Washington Post,” “The Liberty Bell” (Monty Python theme). The sousaphone was developed at his request. | learn more · Stars and Stripes Forever |
| Scott Joplin | c. 1868–1917 | “King of Ragtime”: “Maple Leaf Rag” (1899, named for a club in Sedalia, Missouri), “The Entertainer” (1902; revived in the 1973 film The Sting), opera Treemonisha (posthumous Pulitzer special citation, 1976). | learn more · Maple Leaf Rag |
| W. C. Handy | 1873–1958 | “Father of the Blues”: “St. Louis Blues,” “Memphis Blues.” | learn more |
| Louis Armstrong | 1901–1971 | “Satchmo”; New Orleans trumpeter and singer; Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings (“West End Blues”); popularized scat singing (“Heebie Jeebies,” 1926); “What a Wonderful World”; “Hello, Dolly!” knocked the Beatles off No. 1 in 1964. Mentor: King Oliver. | learn more |
| Duke Ellington | 1899–1974 | Washington, D.C.-born bandleader and composer; Harlem’s Cotton Club (1927–1931); “Mood Indigo,” “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing),” “Sophisticated Lady,” “Satin Doll”; theme “Take the ‘A’ Train” (written by Billy Strayhorn); suite Black, Brown and Beige; Sacred Concerts. Presidential Medal of Freedom (1969); posthumous Pulitzer special citation (1999). | learn more |
| Count Basie | 1904–1984 | Led the definitive Kansas City swing band (grew out of Bennie Moten’s orchestra); riff-based “One O’Clock Jump,” “Jumpin’ at the Woodside.” | learn more · Kansas City jazz |
| Benny Goodman / Glenn Miller | 1909–1986 / 1904–1944 | Swing era: Goodman, “King of Swing,” 1938 Carnegie Hall concert (“Sing, Sing, Sing”). Miller: “In the Mood,” “Moonlight Serenade,” “Chattanooga Choo Choo”; disappeared over the English Channel in 1944. | Goodman · Miller |
| Charlie “Bird” Parker | 1920–1955 | Alto saxophonist, co-creator of bebop with trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie: “Ko-Ko,” “Ornithology,” “Yardbird Suite,” “Now’s the Time.” Born in Kansas City, Kansas, and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, where he learned in the 18th & Vine jazz scene and Jay McShann’s band. New York’s Birdland club was named for him. Died at 34. | learn more · bebop |
| Billie Holiday / Ella Fitzgerald | 1915–1959 / 1917–1996 | Holiday (“Lady Day”): “Strange Fruit” (anti-lynching song). Fitzgerald (“First Lady of Song”): scat virtuoso, Songbook albums. | Holiday · Fitzgerald |
| Miles Davis | 1926–1991 | Trumpeter who kept changing jazz: Birth of the Cool, Kind of Blue (1959, modal jazz, best-selling jazz album), Bitches Brew (jazz-rock fusion). | learn more · Kind of Blue |
| John Coltrane / Dave Brubeck / Thelonious Monk | 1926–1967 / 1920–2012 / 1917–1982 | Coltrane: Giant Steps, A Love Supreme, “My Favorite Things.” Brubeck: album Time Out with “Take Five” (in 5/4 time, written by Paul Desmond). Monk: “’Round Midnight,” “Straight, No Chaser.” | Coltrane · Take Five · Monk |
| Irving Berlin / Rodgers & Hammerstein | 1888–1989 / partnership 1943–1959 | Berlin: “White Christmas,” “God Bless America,” “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” (could not read music). Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals: Oklahoma! (1943), Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, The Sound of Music. | Berlin · R&H |
Nicknamed symphonies and sonatas
| Nickname | Composer and number | Why the name / clue | More |
|---|---|---|---|
| Surprise | Haydn, Symphony No. 94 | A sudden loud chord in the quiet slow movement (“to wake the ladies”). | learn more |
| Farewell | Haydn, Symphony No. 45 | Musicians snuff their candles and leave one by one in the finale. | learn more |
| Jupiter | Mozart, Symphony No. 41 | His last symphony; finale combines five themes in counterpoint. Nickname not Mozart’s own. | learn more |
| Eroica | Beethoven, Symphony No. 3 | “Heroic”; dedicated to Napoleon until Beethoven angrily scratched out the dedication when Napoleon crowned himself emperor (1804). | learn more |
| (Fifth) | Beethoven, Symphony No. 5 in C minor | Short-short-short-long opening (“fate knocking at the door”); in Morse code that rhythm is “V,” used as a WWII “V for Victory” signal. | learn more |
| Pastoral | Beethoven, Symphony No. 6 | Countryside scenes in five movements: brook, bird calls (flute nightingale, oboe quail, clarinet cuckoo), peasants’ dance, thunderstorm, shepherd’s song. | learn more |
| Choral | Beethoven, Symphony No. 9 in D minor | Finale sets Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” for soloists and chorus (first major symphony with voices); anthem of the European Union. | learn more |
| Moonlight Sonata | Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 14 | Nickname added after his death by critic Ludwig Rellstab (moonlight on Lake Lucerne). | learn more |
| Unfinished | Schubert, Symphony No. 8 in B minor | Only two movements completed; manuscript sat unknown until 1865. | learn more |
| Italian / Scottish | Mendelssohn, Nos. 4 and 3 | Travel impressions of Italy and Scotland. | Italian · Scottish |
| From the New World | Dvořák, Symphony No. 9 | Written in America (1893); the English horn Largo melody. | learn more |
| Pathétique | Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 6 | Ends with a slow, dying movement; he died nine days after the premiere. | learn more |
| Resurrection | Mahler, Symphony No. 2 | Choral finale on rising again. | learn more |
| Organ | Saint-Saëns, Symphony No. 3 | Pipe organ thunders in the finale (the “Babe” theme). | learn more |
| Leningrad | Shostakovich, Symphony No. 7 | Written during the Nazi siege; microfilm score flown to the West. | learn more |
“Pathétique” is both Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 8 and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6. And Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata is not Debussy’s “Clair de lune” (“moonlight”). Beethoven’s Pathétique · Clair de lune
Major operas
| Opera | Composer | Premiere | Setting and plot in one line | More |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| L’Orfeo | Monteverdi | 1607 | Orpheus goes to the underworld for Eurydice and loses her by looking back. | learn more |
| Dido and Aeneas | Purcell | c. 1689 | Carthage: Aeneas abandons Queen Dido, who sings her Lament and dies. | learn more |
| The Marriage of Figaro | Mozart (libretto Da Ponte) | 1786 | Near Seville: servants Figaro and Susanna outwit the philandering Count Almaviva on their wedding day (sequel to Beaumarchais’s Barber). | learn more |
| Don Giovanni | Mozart (Da Ponte) | 1787 | Seville: the seducer Don Juan kills the Commendatore, whose statue later drags him to hell; servant Leporello’s “Catalogue Aria” lists his conquests. | learn more |
| The Magic Flute | Mozart | 1791 | German Singspiel with Masonic symbolism: Prince Tamino and bird-catcher Papageno face trials; the Queen of the Night’s high-flying vengeance aria; wise Sarastro. | learn more |
| Fidelio | Beethoven | 1805 (revised 1814) | Leonore disguises herself as a man, “Fidelio,” to rescue her husband Florestan from a political prison. | learn more |
| The Barber of Seville | Rossini | 1816 | Barber Figaro helps Count Almaviva win Rosina from her guardian, Dr. Bartolo. | learn more |
| Lucia di Lammermoor | Donizetti | 1835 | Scotland (from Walter Scott): forced into marriage, Lucia kills her groom and sings a famous mad scene. | learn more |
| Nabucco | Verdi | 1842 | Babylonian captivity of the Hebrews under Nebuchadnezzar; “Va, pensiero.” | learn more |
| Rigoletto | Verdi | 1851 | Mantua: hunchbacked jester’s curse comes true when his daughter Gilda dies in place of the womanizing Duke (from Victor Hugo’s Le roi s’amuse). | learn more |
| La traviata | Verdi | 1853 | Paris: courtesan Violetta gives up Alfredo at his father’s request and dies of tuberculosis (from Dumas fils’s La Dame aux camélias). | learn more |
| Aida | Verdi | 1871 (Cairo) | Ancient Egypt: enslaved Ethiopian princess Aida and Egyptian general Radamès are buried alive together; Triumphal March. | learn more |
| Tristan und Isolde | Wagner | 1865 | A love potion binds the knight Tristan and the Irish princess Isolde; ends with Isolde’s “Liebestod” (love-death). | learn more |
| Der Ring des Nibelungen | Wagner | complete 1876 (Bayreuth) | A cursed gold ring forged from Rhine gold; gods, giants, dwarves; Valkyrie Brünnhilde and hero Siegfried; ends with Valhalla burning. | learn more |
| Carmen | Bizet | 1875 | Seville: fiery cigarette-factory worker Carmen leaves soldier Don José for bullfighter Escamillo; José stabs her outside the bullring (from Mérimée’s novella). | learn more |
| Eugene Onegin | Tchaikovsky | 1879 | From Pushkin’s verse novel: bored Onegin rejects Tatyana’s love letter, kills his friend Lensky in a duel, then regrets it. | learn more |
| Cavalleria rusticana / Pagliacci | Mascagni / Leoncavallo | 1890 / 1892 | The “Cav and Pag” double bill of verismo: Sicilian jealousy (famous Intermezzo) / a clown kills his wife onstage (“Vesti la giubba”). | Cav · Pag |
| La bohème | Puccini | 1896 | Paris Latin Quarter: poor poet Rodolfo loves seamstress Mimì, who dies of consumption; basis of the musical Rent. | learn more |
| Tosca | Puccini | 1900 | Rome, 1800: singer Tosca stabs police chief Scarpia, her lover is executed, and she leaps from Castel Sant’Angelo; “Vissi d’arte.” | learn more |
| Madama Butterfly | Puccini | 1904 | Nagasaki: geisha Cio-Cio-San waits for U.S. Navy officer Pinkerton, who returns with an American wife; “Un bel dì”; inspired Miss Saigon. | learn more |
| Salome | Richard Strauss | 1905 | From Oscar Wilde: Dance of the Seven Veils; Salome demands the head of John the Baptist. | learn more |
| Turandot | Puccini (finished by Alfano) | 1926 | Peking: icy princess beheads suitors who fail her three riddles; Prince Calaf answers and sings “Nessun dorma.” | learn more |
| Porgy and Bess | Gershwin | 1935 | Catfish Row, Charleston, South Carolina: disabled beggar Porgy loves Bess; “Summertime,” “It Ain’t Necessarily So.” | learn more |
| Peter Grimes | Britten | 1945 | English fishing village turns on a brooding fisherman after his apprentices die. | learn more |
| H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, The Mikado | Gilbert (words) and Sullivan (music) | 1878, 1879, 1885 | Comic English operettas produced by Richard D’Oyly Carte at the Savoy Theatre; “I am the very model of a modern Major-General” (Pirates); Mikado set in Titipu, Japan. | learn more |
Musical terms
Tempo (slowest to fastest)
| Term | Meaning | More |
|---|---|---|
| Grave / Largo / Lento | Very slow and solemn / slow and broad / slow | learn more |
| Adagio / Andante | Slow, “at ease” / walking pace | adagio · andante |
| Moderato / Allegretto | Moderate / moderately fast | learn more |
| Allegro / Vivace / Presto / Prestissimo | Fast and cheerful / lively / very fast / as fast as possible | allegro · tempo |
| Accelerando, ritardando (rallentando), a tempo, rubato, fermata | Speed up; slow down; return to the tempo; “robbed time,” flexible push-and-pull; hold a note longer (the “bird’s eye” symbol) | rubato · fermata |
Dynamics and articulation
| Term | Meaning | More |
|---|---|---|
| pp pianissimo, p piano, mp mezzo-piano, mf mezzo-forte, f forte, ff fortissimo | Very soft → very loud. The piano’s full name, pianoforte (“soft-loud”; invented by Bartolomeo Cristofori around 1700), comes from its ability to play both. | learn more · Cristofori |
| Crescendo / decrescendo (diminuendo) / sforzando (sfz) | Gradually louder / gradually softer / sudden strong accent | learn more |
| Legato / staccato | Smooth and connected / short and detached | legato · staccato |
| Pizzicato / arco | Plucking a string instrument / return to using the bow | learn more |
| Glissando, tremolo, trill, vibrato | Slide between pitches; rapid repeated note; rapid alternation of two adjacent notes; slight wavering of pitch | glissando · vibrato |
| A cappella, da capo (D.C.), coda, ostinato | Voices without instruments (“in the chapel style”); go back to the beginning; closing tail section; short pattern repeated persistently (Boléro’s snare drum) | a cappella · coda · ostinato |
Forms and genres
| Term | Meaning / example | More |
|---|---|---|
| Sonata form | Structure of most Classical first movements: exposition (two themes) → development → recapitulation (often with a coda). | learn more |
| Sonata | Multi-movement piece for one or two instruments (e.g., piano sonata, violin sonata). | learn more |
| Symphony | Large orchestral work, usually four movements: fast (sonata form), slow, minuet or scherzo, fast finale. | learn more |
| Concerto | Soloist with orchestra, usually three movements (fast-slow-fast), with a cadenza (showy solo passage). Baroque concerto grosso: small group of soloists vs. full ensemble. | learn more · cadenza |
| Fugue | Strict imitative counterpoint: a subject stated in one voice, then answered in others; Bach is the master. | learn more |
| Canon / round | Voices imitate the same melody exactly, entering one after another (“Row, Row, Row Your Boat”; Pachelbel). | learn more |
| Rondo; theme and variations; minuet and trio; scherzo | Rondo: recurring main theme (A-B-A-C-A). Variations: a theme altered repeatedly. Minuet: stately dance in 3/4. Scherzo (“joke”): Beethoven’s faster replacement for the minuet. | rondo · variations · scherzo |
| Suite | Set of dances (Baroque: allemande, courante, sarabande, gigue) or excerpts from a ballet or opera (Nutcracker Suite). | learn more |
| Oratorio | Large unstaged dramatic work, usually sacred, for soloists, chorus and orchestra: Handel’s Messiah, Haydn’s The Creation, Mendelssohn’s Elijah. | learn more |
| Cantata; Mass; motet; madrigal | Cantata: shorter vocal work (Bach wrote 200+). Mass: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei. Motet: sacred polyphonic choral piece. Madrigal: secular Renaissance part-song. | cantata · Mass · madrigal |
| Requiem | Mass for the dead, often with the Dies irae (“Day of Wrath”): Mozart, Verdi, Fauré; Brahms’s German Requiem uses Luther’s Bible texts instead of the Latin liturgy; Britten’s War Requiem. | learn more |
| Opera terms | Aria (solo song), recitative (speech-like singing that moves the plot), libretto (the text), overture (orchestral opening), leitmotif (recurring theme for a character or idea, Wagner), bel canto (“beautiful singing,” Bellini, Donizetti), verismo (gritty realism), operetta (light, with spoken dialogue), Singspiel (German opera with spoken dialogue). | aria · recitative · leitmotif · verismo |
| Symphonic (tone) poem; program vs. absolute music | One-movement orchestral piece telling a story or painting a scene (Liszt invented it: Les préludes; Smetana’s Moldau; Saint-Saëns’s Danse macabre). Program music has an outside story; absolute music does not. | learn more · program music |
| Étude; nocturne; lied; rhapsody | “Study” piece for technique; dreamy “night piece” (John Field invented it, Chopin perfected it); German art song (plural lieder); free-form, episodic piece. | étude · nocturne · lied |
| Texture | Monophony (one melody line, e.g., chant), homophony (melody with chords), polyphony / counterpoint (several independent lines). | polyphony · counterpoint |
Voice types (highest to lowest)
| Voice | Notes | More |
|---|---|---|
| Soprano | Highest female voice; a coloratura soprano sings agile high runs (Queen of the Night). Leading lady = prima donna. | learn more |
| Mezzo-soprano | Middle female voice (Carmen). | learn more |
| Contralto (alto) | Lowest female voice. | learn more |
| Countertenor | Male singing in the alto range, mostly in falsetto; replaced the Baroque castrati (e.g., Farinelli). | learn more |
| Tenor | Highest common male voice; usually the romantic hero. The “Three Tenors”: Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo, José Carreras (first concert 1990, Rome, World Cup). | learn more · Three Tenors |
| Baritone | Middle male voice (Figaro, Rigoletto). | learn more |
| Bass | Lowest male voice (basso profundo is the deepest). | learn more |
The orchestra
| Section | Instruments (high → low) | Facts that come up | More |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strings | Violin (firsts and seconds), viola, cello (violoncello), double bass; harp | Largest section. The concertmaster (principal first violin) leads tuning and plays solos. The viola reads alto (C) clef. | learn more · concertmaster |
| Woodwinds | Piccolo, flute, oboe, English horn, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon, contrabassoon (saxophone sometimes) | The oboe gives the tuning A. The piccolo is the highest-pitched orchestral instrument. The English horn is an alto oboe, neither English nor a horn. Flutes and saxophones count as woodwinds despite being metal; oboe and bassoon use double reeds, clarinet and sax single reeds. The saxophone was invented by Adolphe Sax (1840s). | learn more · English horn |
| Brass | Trumpet, French horn, trombone, tuba | Trombone changes pitch with a slide; tuba is the lowest brass. Sound comes from buzzing lips in a cup mouthpiece. | learn more |
| Percussion | Timpani (kettledrums, tuned), snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, xylophone (wooden bars), glockenspiel (metal bars), chimes, gong/tam-tam, celesta (keyboard of metal bars), piano (sometimes) | The celesta is the “Sugar Plum Fairy” sound. Timpani are the only standard drums tuned to definite pitches. | learn more · celesta · timpani |
Notation quick hits: treble-clef lines E-G-B-D-F (“Every Good Boy Does Fine”) and spaces F-A-C-E; bass-clef lines G-B-D-F-A (“Good Boys Do Fine Always”) and spaces A-C-E-G (“All Cows Eat Grass”). Order of sharps: F C G D A E B; flats are the reverse. Waltz = 3/4; “common time” (C) = 4/4; “cut time” = 2/2. Guido of Arezzo (c. 1000) developed the staff and the syllables that became do-re-mi. clefs · circle of fifths · Guido
Johann Strauss II (Viennese waltzes, Blue Danube) is unrelated to Richard Strauss (German, Also sprach Zarathustra). Both appear in the film 2001. Likewise, Edvard Grieg (composer) and Edvard Munch (painter) are both Norwegian Edvards. J. Strauss II · R. Strauss
Art Terms
↑ top| Term | Meaning | Classic example | More |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chiaroscuro | “Light-dark”: strong contrast of light and shadow to model 3-D form. | Leonardo; Rembrandt | learn more |
| Tenebrism | Extreme chiaroscuro: figures spotlit out of near-total darkness. | Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi | learn more |
| Sfumato | “Smoky”: soft, hazy transitions with no hard outlines. | Mona Lisa’s face | learn more |
| Fresco (buon vs. secco) | Painting on plaster. Buon fresco (“true fresco”): pigment in water on wet lime plaster, becoming part of the wall; done one day’s patch (giornata) at a time. Fresco secco: on dry plaster, which flakes more easily. | Sistine Chapel (buon fresco); Leonardo’s Last Supper (experimental dry-wall method, hence its decay) | learn more |
| Tempera | Pigment bound with egg yolk; dries fast and matte; standard for panel painting before oil. | Botticelli’s Birth of Venus; Andrew Wyeth revived it | learn more |
| Oil paint | Pigment in linseed or other drying oil; slow-drying, allows blending and translucent glazes. Perfected (not invented) by the Flemish, especially Jan van Eyck. | Arnolfini Portrait | learn more · glaze |
| Encaustic | Painting with hot, pigmented wax. | Fayum mummy portraits (Roman Egypt); Jasper Johns’s Flag | learn more |
| Impasto | Paint laid on so thickly that brush or knife marks stand up from the surface. | Van Gogh; late Rembrandt | learn more |
| Gouache, watercolor, pastel | Opaque watercolor; transparent water-based paint; sticks of powdered pigment (Degas’s favorite). | Winslow Homer’s watercolors; Degas’s dancers | gouache · watercolor · pastel |
| Contrapposto | “Counterpose”: weight on one leg, so hips and shoulders tilt in opposite directions; looks relaxed and alive. | Polykleitos’s Doryphoros; Michelangelo’s David | learn more |
| Linear perspective | Parallel lines (orthogonals) converge at a vanishing point on the horizon line to create depth. Demonstrated by Brunelleschi c. 1415–20, written up by Alberti (1435). | Masaccio’s Holy Trinity; Leonardo’s Last Supper (vanishing point at Christ’s head) | learn more |
| Atmospheric (aerial) perspective | Distant things painted paler, bluer and blurrier. | Leonardo’s backgrounds | learn more |
| Foreshortening | Shortening an object that points toward the viewer so it looks correct in depth. | Mantegna’s Lamentation over the Dead Christ (seen from the feet) | learn more |
| Trompe l’oeil | “Fool the eye”: illusion so real it looks like actual objects or space. On ceilings, di sotto in sù (“from below upward”). | Mantegna’s painted oculus in the Camera degli Sposi (Mantua); legend of Zeuxis’s grapes and Parrhasius’s curtain | learn more · di sotto in sù |
| Diptych / triptych / polyptych | Work in two / three / many hinged panels, often an altarpiece; the strip of small scenes beneath is the predella. | Garden of Earthly Delights (triptych); Ghent Altarpiece (polyptych); Wilton Diptych | triptych · polyptych · predella |
| Tondo | A circular painting or relief. | Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo | learn more |
| Still life (nature morte) | Arrangement of inanimate objects: fruit, flowers, vessels, food. | Dutch Golden Age; Cézanne’s apples | learn more |
| Vanitas / memento mori | Still life with symbols of death and passing time (skull, guttering candle, hourglass, rotting fruit) warning that earthly things are “vanity.” Memento mori: “remember you must die.” | 17th-century Dutch still lifes; Holbein’s skull in The Ambassadors | learn more · memento mori |
| Anamorphosis | Distorted image that looks correct only from a special angle or in a curved mirror. | The skull in The Ambassadors | learn more |
| Genre painting / history painting | Everyday-life scenes / grand narrative scenes from history, myth or the Bible, ranked highest in the academies’ hierarchy of genres (then portrait, genre, landscape, still life). | Vermeer, Bruegel (genre); David’s Oath of the Horatii (history) | genre · history · hierarchy |
| En plein air | “In the open air”: painting outdoors on the spot, made easy by portable paint tubes (patented 1841 by American painter John Goffe Rand). | Monet and the Impressionists; Barbizon School | learn more |
| Pietà | “Pity”: the Virgin Mary holding and mourning the dead Christ across her lap. | Michelangelo’s Pietà (St. Peter’s) | learn more |
| Other Christian subjects | Annunciation (Gabriel tells Mary she will bear Jesus); Adoration of the Magi; Deposition / Descent from the Cross; Lamentation (mourning over Christ’s body); Noli me tangere (risen Christ and Mary Magdalene); Ecce Homo (Pilate presents Christ). | Fra Angelico’s Annunciation; van der Weyden’s Descent from the Cross (Prado) | Annunciation · Deposition · Noli me tangere |
| Putto (pl. putti) | Chubby naked baby boys, often winged, in Renaissance and Baroque art (not strictly cherubs, which are angels). | The two in Raphael’s Sistine Madonna | learn more |
| Halo / mandorla | Disk of light around a holy head / almond-shaped glow around a whole holy body. | Byzantine and Gothic art | halo · mandorla |
| Icon / iconoclasm / iconography | Sacred image in Eastern Orthodoxy / destruction of images on religious grounds (Byzantine controversy, 726–843; Protestant Reformation) / the study of symbols in art (St. Peter’s keys, St. Catherine’s wheel). | Rublev’s Trinity | icon · iconoclasm · iconography |
| Cartoon / pentimento / gesso | Full-size preparatory drawing for a fresco or tapestry (the original meaning) / a visible earlier change the artist painted over (“repentance”) / white chalk-and-glue primer on panels. | Leonardo’s Burlington House Cartoon (National Gallery, London) | cartoon · pentimento · gesso |
| Grisaille | Painting done entirely in shades of gray, often imitating sculpture. | Outer wings of the Ghent Altarpiece | learn more |
| Mosaic | Images made of small pieces (tesserae) of stone or glass. | Ravenna; Alexander Mosaic | learn more |
| Stained glass | Colored glass pieces held by lead strips (cames); rose windows and lancets. | Chartres; Sainte-Chapelle | learn more |
| Relief vs. in the round | Sculpture projecting from a background (low/bas-relief or high relief) vs. freestanding sculpture viewable from all sides. | Parthenon frieze; Ghiberti’s doors (relief); David (in the round) | learn more |
| Lost-wax casting (cire perdue) | Bronze casting method: wax model encased in clay, wax melted out, molten bronze poured in. | Greek bronzes; Cellini’s Perseus | learn more |
| Chryselephantine | Made of gold and ivory over a wooden core. | Phidias’s Athena Parthenos and Zeus | learn more |
| Kouros / kore / Archaic smile | Archaic Greek standing nude youth / clothed maiden; stiff, left foot forward, with a faint fixed smile. | New York Kouros (Met) | kouros · Archaic smile |
| Caryatid | Column carved as a draped female figure (male version: atlas / telamon). | Porch of the Maidens, Erechtheion | learn more |
| Readymade / found object | Ordinary manufactured object chosen and presented as art (Duchamp’s term). | Bicycle Wheel (1913); Fountain (1917) | learn more · found object |
| Collage / papier collé / assemblage / photomontage | Pasted materials on a surface / pasted paper specifically / 3-D collage of found objects / combined cut-up photographs. | Picasso and Braque (Synthetic Cubism); Nevelson (assemblage); Hannah Höch (photomontage) | collage · assemblage · photomontage |
| Frottage / automatism | Rubbing pencil over paper laid on a textured surface / drawing without conscious control to tap the unconscious. | Max Ernst; André Masson | frottage · automatism |
| Installation, performance art, happening | Room-sized environment as artwork / art made of live actions / partly improvised art event (Allan Kaprow’s term, 1950s). | Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms; Marina Abramović | installation · performance · happening |
| Printmaking: woodcut, engraving, etching, lithography, screen printing | Relief print carved from wood / lines cut into metal with a burin (intaglio) / lines bitten into metal with acid (intaglio) / drawing in grease on stone (planographic) / ink forced through a mesh stencil (silkscreen, serigraphy). | Dürer and Hokusai (woodcut); Dürer (engraving); Rembrandt (etching); Toulouse-Lautrec (lithograph posters); Warhol (silkscreen) | woodcut · engraving · etching · lithography · screen printing |
| Ukiyo-e / Japonisme | “Pictures of the floating world”: Japanese woodblock prints of actors, beauties and landscapes / the Western craze for Japanese art after Japan opened to trade in the 1850s. | Hokusai, Hiroshige; Van Gogh, Whistler, Cassatt | ukiyo-e · Japonisme |
| Complementary colors | Opposites on the color wheel (red–green, blue–orange, yellow–violet); placed together they intensify each other. | Van Gogh’s Night Café | learn more |
| Golden ratio | About 1.618:1, thought to give pleasing proportions; also the “divine proportion.” | Often (sometimes dubiously) claimed for the Parthenon and Leonardo | learn more |
| Salon / avant-garde | The official annual exhibition of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts / “advance guard”: experimental artists ahead of their time. | Salon des Refusés (1863) | Salon · avant-garde |
| Odalisque | A reclining female figure from a harem, a favorite Orientalist subject. | Ingres’s Grande Odalisque; Matisse | learn more |
| Gesamtkunstwerk | “Total work of art” combining all the arts (Wagner’s term). | Wagner’s Bayreuth productions; the Vienna Secession’s ideals | learn more |
Museums
↑ topEurope
| Museum | City | Key facts and holdings | More |
|---|---|---|---|
| Louvre | Paris | Former royal palace, opened as a public museum in 1793; the world’s most-visited museum; I. M. Pei’s glass pyramid entrance (1989). Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, Winged Victory of Samothrace, Liberty Leading the People, Raft of the Medusa, Oath of the Horatii, Coronation of Napoleon, Grande Odalisque, the Code of Hammurabi stele. | learn more · official site |
| Musée d’Orsay | Paris | In a converted Beaux-Arts railway station (Gare d’Orsay, built for 1900); opened 1986; French art from 1848 to 1914, the world’s greatest Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection. Olympia, Déjeuner sur l’herbe, Whistler’s Mother, The Gleaners, Burial at Ornans, Bal du moulin de la Galette, Van Gogh self-portraits. | learn more |
| Other Paris museums | Paris | Musée de l’Orangerie: Monet’s giant Water Lilies panels in two oval rooms. Musée Marmottan Monet: Impression, Sunrise. Centre Pompidou: national modern art museum in the inside-out High-Tech building. Musée Rodin: The Thinker in the garden. | Orangerie · Marmottan · Pompidou · Musée Rodin |
| Prado (Museo del Prado) | Madrid | Opened 1819 from the Spanish royal collection. Las Meninas, The Garden of Earthly Delights, The Third of May 1808, Goya’s Black Paintings and the Majas, van der Weyden’s Descent from the Cross, Titian’s Charles V. With the Reina Sofía (Guernica, Dalí, Miró) and the Thyssen-Bornemisza it forms Madrid’s “Golden Triangle of Art.” | Prado · Reina Sofía |
| Uffizi | Florence | Built by Giorgio Vasari (1560s) as offices (uffizi) for Cosimo I de’ Medici. Birth of Venus, Primavera, Venus of Urbino, Leonardo’s Annunciation, Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo, Caravaggio’s Medusa, Artemisia’s Judith, Madonna with the Long Neck. Nearby: the Accademia (Michelangelo’s David) and the Bargello (Donatello’s David). | Uffizi · Accademia · Bargello |
| Vatican Museums | Vatican City | Begun by Pope Julius II (the Laocoön was an early acquisition, 1506). Sistine Chapel, Raphael Rooms (School of Athens), Laocoön, Apollo Belvedere, Belvedere Torso, Augustus of Prima Porta, Raphael’s Transfiguration. Rome’s Borghese Gallery holds Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne and Canova’s Paolina. | Vatican · Borghese |
| Rijksmuseum | Amsterdam | Dutch national museum (building by Pierre Cuypers, 1885). The Night Watch (in its own gallery), The Milkmaid, The Jewish Bride, The Little Street. Also in Amsterdam: the Van Gogh Museum (Potato Eaters, a Sunflowers, Bedroom). | Rijksmuseum · Van Gogh Museum |
| Mauritshuis | The Hague | Small royal gallery: Girl with a Pearl Earring, View of Delft, Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp, Carel Fabritius’s The Goldfinch (Donna Tartt’s novel). The Kröller-Müller (Otterlo) has the second-largest Van Gogh collection (Café Terrace at Night). | Mauritshuis · Kröller-Müller |
| Hermitage | St. Petersburg | Founded by Catherine the Great (1764); includes the Winter Palace. Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son and Danaë; Leonardo’s Benois Madonna; Matisse’s The Dance and Music. | learn more |
| Kunsthistorisches Museum & Belvedere | Vienna | KHM: Habsburg collection with the most Bruegels anywhere (Hunters in the Snow, Tower of Babel, Peasant Wedding), Vermeer’s Art of Painting, Cellini’s Salt Cellar. Belvedere: Klimt’s The Kiss. | KHM · Belvedere |
| National Gallery | London | On Trafalgar Square (founded 1824); paintings only. Arnolfini Portrait, The Ambassadors, The Hay Wain, The Fighting Temeraire, Rain, Steam and Speed, a Sunflowers, Rokeby Venus, the London Virgin of the Rocks. | learn more |
| Tate Britain / Tate Modern | London | Tate Britain: British art, the Turner Bequest, Millais’s Ophelia, Waterhouse’s Lady of Shalott. Tate Modern (2000): in the former Bankside Power Station with its huge Turbine Hall; Marilyn Diptych, Whaam!, Rothko’s Seagram Murals. | Tate Britain · Tate Modern |
| British Museum | London | Founded 1753; antiquities rather than paintings: Rosetta Stone, Parthenon (Elgin) Marbles, Lewis Chessmen, Sutton Hoo treasure. | learn more |
United States
| Museum | City | Key facts and holdings | More |
|---|---|---|---|
| Metropolitan Museum of Art (“the Met”) | New York | Founded 1870 on Fifth Avenue; largest art museum in the U.S. Washington Crossing the Delaware, Madame X, The Death of Socrates, Autumn Rhythm, The Oxbow, Bruegel’s The Harvesters, Rembrandt’s Aristotle with a Bust of Homer, the Egyptian Temple of Dendur. Medieval branch: The Cloisters (Unicorn Tapestries). | learn more · Cloisters |
| Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) | New York | Founded 1929 by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and friends; first director Alfred H. Barr Jr. The Starry Night, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, The Persistence of Memory, Campbell’s Soup Cans, Christina’s World, Broadway Boogie Woogie, The Sleeping Gypsy, Monet Water Lilies. | learn more |
| Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum | New York | Frank Lloyd Wright’s spiral building (1959); strong in Kandinsky. Sister museums: Guggenheim Bilbao (Gehry) and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection (Venice). | learn more · Peggy Guggenheim |
| Whitney and Frick | New York | Whitney Museum of American Art (founded by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney; Hopper’s Early Sunday Morning; the Whitney Biennial). Frick Collection: Gilded Age mansion with Vermeers, Holbein’s Thomas More, Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert. | Whitney · Frick |
| Art Institute of Chicago | Chicago | Founded 1879; bronze lions on Michigan Avenue; Renzo Piano’s Modern Wing (2009). American Gothic, Nighthawks, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, The Old Guitarist, At the Moulin Rouge, The Child’s Bath, Caillebotte’s Paris Street; Rainy Day, Chagall’s America Windows, the Thorne Miniature Rooms. | learn more |
| National Gallery of Art | Washington, D.C. | Founded 1937 with Andrew Mellon’s gift; free; on the National Mall. West Building (John Russell Pope) and East Building (I. M. Pei, 1978, with a Calder mobile). Ginevra de’ Benci (only Leonardo painting in the Americas), Lavender Mist, Watson and the Shark, Raphael’s Alba Madonna, Vermeer’s Woman Holding a Balance, Degas’s wax Little Dancer. | learn more |
| Smithsonian art museums | Washington, D.C. | National Portrait Gallery (Gilbert Stuart’s Lansdowne Washington; Obama portraits by Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald); Smithsonian American Art Museum; Freer Gallery (Whistler’s Peacock Room); Hirshhorn (modern sculpture). | NPG · SAAM · Peacock Room |
| Philadelphia museums | Philadelphia | Philadelphia Museum of Art (the “Rocky Steps”; Duchamp’s Nude Descending and Étant donnés; Cézanne’s Large Bathers). Barnes Foundation (Albert C. Barnes’s huge Cézanne, Renoir and Matisse collection, incl. The Joy of Life, hung in his own idiosyncratic “ensembles”). | PMA · Barnes |
| Boston museums | Boston | Museum of Fine Arts (Gauguin’s Where Do We Come From?; Copley’s Paul Revere). Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: in March 1990 thieves posing as police stole 13 works, including Vermeer’s The Concert and Rembrandt’s only seascape, The Storm on the Sea of Galilee; empty frames still hang; unsolved. | MFA · Gardner heist |
| Other notable U.S. museums | Various | Getty Center, Los Angeles (Richard Meier; Van Gogh’s Irises). Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas (Alice Walton; Moshe Safdie building; Kindred Spirits, Rockwell’s Rosie the Riveter). Detroit Institute of Arts (Rivera murals). Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida. Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh. | Getty · Crystal Bridges · DIA · Dalí Museum |
Kansas and the region
| Museum | Location | Key facts and holdings | More |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art | Kansas City, Missouri | Opened 1933; named for Kansas City Star founder William Rockhill Nelson and Mary Atkins; free admission. Giant Shuttlecocks by Oldenburg and van Bruggen on the lawn (1994); Henry Moore Sculpture Garden; Steven Holl’s glowing Bloch Building (2007); a renowned Chinese art collection. Paintings include Caravaggio’s Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness, Van Gogh’s Olive Trees, one panel of a Monet Water Lilies triptych, and Benton’s Persephone. | learn more · official site |
| Spencer Museum of Art | University of Kansas, Lawrence | KU’s art museum (current building opened 1978), with tens of thousands of objects from many cultures; famous holdings include Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s La Pia de’ Tolomei. | learn more · official site |
| Wichita Art Museum | Wichita | Founded 1935 around the Roland P. Murdock Collection of American art; includes Edward Hopper’s Sunlight on Brownstones and works by Cassatt, Homer and the Regionalists. | learn more · official site |
| Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art | Kansas State University, Manhattan | K-State’s art museum (opened 1996); emphasis on the art of Kansas and the region. | learn more · official site |
| Ulrich Museum of Art | Wichita State University | Modern and contemporary art and a campus-wide outdoor sculpture collection; Joan Miró’s mosaic mural Personnages Oiseaux covers one façade. | learn more |
| Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery | Lindsborg | Devoted to Swedish-born painter Birger Sandzén, who taught at Bethany College and painted vivid, thickly painted Western landscapes. | learn more · Sandzén |
Kansas Connections
↑ topState tournaments like to reward local knowledge. Most of these also appear in the sections above.
- John Steuart Curry (born near Dunavant, Jefferson County): Regionalist painter of Tragic Prelude (John Brown mural, Kansas State Capitol), Baptism in Kansas and Tornado Over Kansas. learn more · Tragic Prelude
- Aaron Douglas (born Topeka, 1899): leading visual artist of the Harlem Renaissance; illustrated James Weldon Johnson’s God’s Trombones; painted Aspects of Negro Life; founded the art department at Fisk University. learn more
- Gordon Parks (born Fort Scott, 1912): photographer for the Farm Security Administration and Life; his 1942 photo American Gothic, Washington, D.C. poses government cleaning woman Ella Watson with mop and broom before a flag, echoing Grant Wood. Directed The Learning Tree (1969, filmed in Fort Scott; first major Hollywood studio film directed by an African American) and Shaft (1971). learn more · the photo
- Birger Sandzén (1871–1954): Swedish-born painter and printmaker of Lindsborg (“Little Sweden”). learn more
- Kansas State Capitol: built 1866–1903; Ad Astra statue by Richard Bergen on the dome (2002); Curry murals inside. learn more
- Frank Lloyd Wright in Wichita: Henry J. Allen House (1915–1918). learn more
- Keeper of the Plains, Wichita, by Blackbear Bosin (1974). learn more
- Garden of Eden, Lucas: S. P. Dinsmoor’s concrete folk-art environment. learn more
- Charlie “Bird” Parker: bebop saxophonist, born in Kansas City, Kansas (1920), raised across the state line in Kansas City, Missouri; the 18th & Vine district there is home to the American Jazz Museum. learn more · American Jazz Museum
- Stan Kenton (born Wichita, 1911): bandleader of big, brassy “progressive jazz.” learn more
- “Home on the Range”: Kansas state song (adopted 1947); words by Dr. Brewster Higley, written near Smith Center in the early 1870s, music by Daniel Kelley. learn more
- Kansas (the band): formed in Topeka; “Carry On Wayward Son” (1976) and “Dust in the Wind” (1977); its first album cover uses Curry’s Tragic Prelude. learn more
- Opera stars: bass Samuel Ramey (born Colby) and mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato (from Prairie Village); both studied at Wichita State. Ramey · DiDonato
- Stage and screen: Hattie McDaniel (born Wichita), first African American to win an Academy Award (1940, Gone with the Wind); silent-film comedian Buster Keaton (born Piqua). McDaniel · Keaton
Commonly Confused Names
↑ top| These… | How to tell them apart | More |
|---|---|---|
| Manet / Monet | MAnet = MAn/people, scandal paintings (Olympia, Déjeuner), 1860s. MOnet = MOstly landscapes and water lilies; named Impressionism. | Manet · Monet |
| Jan van Eyck / Anthony van Dyck / Vincent van Gogh | 1400s Flemish oil pioneer / 1600s Flemish portraitist of Charles I / 1880s Dutch Post-Impressionist. | van Eyck · van Dyck · van Gogh |
| Bernini / Borromini | Sculptor-architect showman (St. Teresa, colonnade, baldacchino) / architect of complex curving churches (San Carlo, Sant’Ivo). | Bernini · Borromini |
| Raphael / Pre-Raphaelites | High Renaissance painter (1483–1520) / Victorian English brotherhood (1848) that rejected the post-Raphael academic style. | Raphael · PRB |
| Michelangelo Buonarroti / Michelangelo Merisi (Caravaggio) | Sistine Chapel and David / tenebrism, violent life, Baroque. | Michelangelo · Caravaggio |
| Henri Rousseau / Jean-Jacques Rousseau / Théodore Rousseau | Self-taught jungle painter (“Le Douanier”) / Enlightenment philosopher / Barbizon School landscape painter. | Henri · Théodore |
| Pieter Bruegel the Elder / Pieter Brueghel the Younger / Jan Brueghel the Elder | The famous father (Hunters in the Snow) / son who copied his father’s works / son known as “Velvet” or “Flower” Brueghel. | the Younger · Jan |
| Hans Holbein the Elder / the Younger | Father, late Gothic altarpieces / son, Henry VIII’s portraitist (The Ambassadors). | the Elder |
| Christopher Wren / Frank Lloyd Wright | St. Paul’s Cathedral, 1600s London / Fallingwater, 20th-century America. | Wren · Wright |
| Louis Sullivan / Arthur Sullivan | Chicago architect (“form follows function”) / English composer of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. | Louis · Arthur |
| Eero Saarinen / Eliel Saarinen | Son: Gateway Arch, TWA terminal / father: Helsinki Central Station, Cranbrook. | Eero · Eliel |
| Johann Strauss II / Richard Strauss | Viennese “Waltz King” (Blue Danube) / German tone poems and Salome (Also sprach Zarathustra). | J. Strauss II · R. Strauss |
| Edvard Grieg / Edvard Munch | Norwegian composer (Peer Gynt) / Norwegian painter (The Scream). | Grieg · Munch |
| Grant Wood’s American Gothic / Gordon Parks’s American Gothic, Washington, D.C. | 1930 Iowa painting (Art Institute of Chicago) / 1942 photograph by the Kansas-born photographer. | Wood · Parks |
| Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People / the French Revolution | It shows the July Revolution of 1830, not 1789. | July Revolution |
| Statue of Liberty: Bartholdi / Eiffel / Hunt / Lazarus | Sculptor / engineer of the iron skeleton / architect of the pedestal / poet of “The New Colossus.” | The New Colossus |
| Thomas Hart Benton (painter) / Thomas Hart Benton (senator) | 20th-century Regionalist muralist / his great-great-uncle, Missouri senator (1821–1851). | the senator |