ErebusFact library / Trivia
10 art facts, each paired with a strange little scene and a hook for the hard word.
Salvador Dalí painted The Persistence of Memory, with its melting clocks, in 1931.
Picture it
A man with a ridiculously long upturned mustache watches pocket watches melt like Camembert over a tree branch. He's a sal-esman selling dollys (Sal-vador Da-lí) on a beach that never ends.
Memory hooks
The Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911 by Vincenzo Peruggia, a handyman who worked there; it was recovered in 1913.
Picture it
In 1911, a handyman hides overnight in a cupboard in the Louvre, then walks out with the Mona Lisa under his smock. He's PERUGGIA, and he keeps it in a trunk for two years, hiding it under his PORRIDGE.
Memory hooks
Van Gogh painted The Starry Night in 1889 at the asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.
Picture it
In 1889, a red-haired painter looks out of the barred window of an asylum in the south of France. A saint named RÉMY ("SAINT-RAY-MEE") sends him the stars: they swirl like whirlpools over the sleeping village.
Memory hooks
The Scream was painted by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch in 1893.
Picture it
A figure on a bridge clutches its face under a blood-red sky and screams. It's so loud that a Norwegian painter, MUNCH, stops MUNCHING his sandwich. The sky shows the year: 18-93.
Memory hooks
Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling between 1508 and 1512, commissioned by Pope Julius II.
Picture it
A sculptor who insists he isn't a painter climbs a scaffold and spends four years with paint dripping in his eyes. The pope who forced him, JULIUS the Second, keeps shouting "JUICE, US, 2!" from below.
Memory hooks
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Girl with a Pearl Earring was painted by Johannes Vermeer and hangs in the Mauritshuis in The Hague.
Picture it
A girl in a blue turban glances over her shoulder, a big pearl glinting at her ear. The painter, VERMEER, peeks at her through a VERY MIRROR-like lens. She now hangs in a house in The Hague called the MAURITSHUIS ("MORE-its-house").
Memory hooks
The Birth of Venus was painted by Sandro Botticelli and hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
Picture it
A goddess drifts to shore standing on a giant scallop shell, blown along by puffing winds. The painter BOTTICELLI pops the cork on a BOTTLE of CHELLI-wine. The painting now hangs in Florence's UFFIZI, where everyone says "OOF, it's FIZZY!"
Memory hooks
Picasso painted Guernica in 1937 in response to the bombing of the Basque town of that name during the Spanish Civil War.
Picture it
A screaming horse, a broken sword and a lightbulb glaring over chaos, all in black, white and grey. Picasso paints it in a fury after bombers destroy a Basque town, GUERNICA, in 1937: "GUERNI-CA, 19-37."
Memory hooks
The Great Wave off Kanagawa is a woodblock print by Hokusai, with Mount Fuji small in the background.
Picture it
A giant wave curls into claws of foam over three tiny boats. Far behind, small and calm, sits snowy MOUNT FUJI. The artist, HOKUSAI, chants "HOCUS SIGH" like a magician as he carves the woodblock.
Memory hooks
Rodin's The Thinker was first designed to sit atop his monumental doorway, The Gates of Hell.
Picture it
A muscular bronze man sits with his chin on his fist, thinking hard. He's perched above a huge pair of doors, THE GATES OF HELL, peering down at the damned. His sculptor, RODIN, is ROAD-IN, stuck in traffic and thinking too.
Memory hooks