40 Art and Literature Trivia Questions for Kids
The easiest art and literature questions in the game, picked for younger players. Every one comes with the answer and a short explanation of why it is right.
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Easy Art and Literature Questions and Answers
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In the painting American Gothic, what farm implement does the man hold?
a pitchfork
Grant Wood modeled the stern-faced man on his own dentist and the woman on his sister, painting them in front of a real house in Eldon, Iowa whose gothic-style window inspired the title. Art historians often note how the fork's three tines echo the stitching on the man's overalls.
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In The Birth of Venus, what carries Venus to the shore?
a seashell
Painted around 1485, the scene shows Zephyrus, the west wind, blowing Venus toward Paphos on Cyprus while a waiting figure, often identified as Flora, holds out a flowered cloak to cover her. The canvas hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
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Who wrote the Roman epic poem The Aeneid?
Virgil
The Roman poet Virgil wrote The Aeneid in the 1st century BCE. Its hero Aeneas travels from the ruins of Troy toward the destiny that will lead to Rome's foundations.
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Who wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland?
Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, an Oxford mathematics lecturer who first told the story aloud during an 1862 boat trip to entertain a friend's young daughter, Alice Liddell.
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In Snow White, what food does the queen use to poison the princess?
apple
The queen poisons Snow White with a disguised apple.
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Who wrote the novel Beloved?
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison published Beloved in 1987. Inspired in part by the story of an enslaved mother, the novel explores memory, trauma, and the afterlife of slavery.
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Who painted The Birth of Venus?
Sandro Botticelli
Sandro Botticelli painted The Birth of Venus in the 1480s. The scene shows Venus arriving on shore after being born from sea foam, drawing on classical mythology.
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What colors appear in the head covering of Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring?
blue and yellow
The girl's head covering combines blue fabric with a yellow-gold band.
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In Charles Perrault's fairy tale, the clever cat asks his penniless master for a sack and one other thing. What is it?
A pair of boots
In Perrault's 1697 tale a miller dies leaving his youngest son nothing but a cat. The cat asks for a sack and a pair of boots, then uses them to catch game for the king, bluff an ogre out of his castle and pass his master off as the Marquis of Carabas.
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Which artist created the Campbell's Soup Cans series?
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol presented Campbell's Soup Cans as a series in 1962. Repeating a familiar commercial product helped make consumer culture a subject of Pop Art.
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Who wrote The Canterbury Tales?
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales in Middle English.
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In The Emperor's New Clothes, who first says the emperor has no clothes?
child
A child is the first person to state openly that the emperor is unclothed.
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Who wrote The Color Purple?
Alice Walker
Alice Walker wrote The Color Purple, which won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
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Who wrote Crime and Punishment?
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote Crime and Punishment.
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Where is the original Michelangelo's David housed?
the Accademia Gallery
The original David was moved indoors to Florence's Accademia Gallery in 1873 for protection. Replicas stand in locations including Piazza della Signoria and Piazzale Michelangelo.
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Which Renaissance artist sculpted the statue of David completed in 1504?
Michelangelo
Michelangelo sculpted David from a single block of Carrara marble between 1501 and 1504. The statue depicts the biblical hero before his battle with Goliath.
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Who wrote The Divine Comedy?
Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri wrote The Divine Comedy in the early 14th century. The poem takes its narrator through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise and helped establish the Tuscan literary tradition.
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Who wrote Don Quixote?
Miguel de Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes wrote Don Quixote, whose two parts appeared in 1605 and 1615. Its deluded knight and practical squire are often treated as foundational figures in the modern novel.
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Who wrote the novel Dracula?
Bram Stoker
Irish writer Bram Stoker wrote Dracula.
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In Shakespeare's time, which performers commonly played female roles on the English stage?
Boy apprentices
Women did not perform on the professional English stage in Shakespeare's era. Companies used boy actors, often trained as apprentices, for female characters.
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Who wrote Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus?
Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley published Frankenstein anonymously in 1818. The novel's scientist Victor Frankenstein creates a living being and then confronts the consequences of abandoning it.
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Traditional fresco painting uses what support?
Wet plaster
Traditional fresco painting applies pigments to wet plaster, allowing the colors to bond with the surface as the plaster dries. This technique helps create murals that can remain remarkably durable for centuries.
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Who painted Girl with a Pearl Earring?
Johannes Vermeer
Johannes Vermeer painted Girl with a Pearl Earring around 1665. The work is sometimes called the 'Mona Lisa of the North' because of its enigmatic expression and intimate scale.
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Which literary genre is known for eerie settings, supernatural elements, and psychological terror?
Gothic literature
Gothic literature commonly uses dark settings, the supernatural, suspense, and psychological fear.
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Who wrote Great Expectations?
Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens wrote the novel Great Expectations.
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Who wrote The Great Gatsby?
F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby in 1925. The novel's glittering parties and doomed romance examine wealth, aspiration, and the mythology of the American Dream.
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Who created The Great Wave off Kanagawa?
Katsushika Hokusai
Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai created The Great Wave off Kanagawa.
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Who painted Guernica?
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso painted Guernica in 1937 in response to the bombing of the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War. Its huge monochrome composition became an anti-war symbol.
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How many lines does a traditional haiku have?
Three lines
A traditional Japanese haiku is arranged in three lines.
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What must Rapunzel let down from her tower window?
hair
Rapunzel lowers her long hair from the tower window.
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Who wrote the tragedy Hamlet?
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare wrote Hamlet around the turn of the 17th century. Its Danish prince, ghost story, and questions about action and uncertainty have made it one of the most studied plays in English.
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Who wrote The Handmaid's Tale?
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood published The Handmaid's Tale in 1985. The dystopian novel is narrated by Offred, a woman forced into reproductive servitude by the regime of Gilead.
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Who wrote the Harry Potter books?
J.K. Rowling
J.K. Rowling wrote the seven main Harry Potter novels.
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Who wrote The Hobbit?
J. R. R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien published The Hobbit in 1937. Bilbo Baggins leaves his comfortable home and joins a quest to reclaim treasure from the dragon Smaug.
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In Edvard Munch's The Scream, what is the central figure doing?
hands pressed to its head
The figure stands on a bridge above Oslofjord, palms pressed flat against a bald skull as its mouth stretches into a long wordless oval. Munch returned to the image at least four times between 1893 and 1910 in tempera and pastel, and also issued it as a lithograph.
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Which Mark Twain novel follows a boy and a runaway man down the Mississippi?
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Published in 1884, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is narrated by Huck himself in the everyday speech of the Mississippi valley, and the raft journey he shares with the escaped slave Jim carries the whole book.
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Who is traditionally credited with The Iliad?
Homer
No verified details of Homer's life survive, and scholars still debate the Homeric question: whether one poet or a tradition of oral storytellers shaped the epic before it was finally written down, likely around the 8th century BCE.
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What French phrase describes the Impressionist practice of painting outdoors?
en plein air
“En plein air” is French for “in the open air,” describing artists painting outdoors directly from the landscape. Impressionists valued the practice for capturing natural light and changing atmospheric effects.
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Which Renaissance artist painted The Last Supper in a Milan monastery?
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo painted The Last Supper around 1498 in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The scene captures the disciples' reactions at one dramatic instant after Jesus announces a betrayal.
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In Andersen's tale, what does the little mermaid give the sea witch in exchange for a pair of legs?
Her voice
The sea witch cuts out the little mermaid's tongue as payment for the potion that splits her tail into legs. In Andersen's ending the prince marries someone else, and the mermaid gets back neither her voice nor her old life.
All 123 art and literature trivia questions · Trivia for kids in every category