Art History Jeopardy

From ancient sculpture to modernism, a free art history survey board for college classes. Project it, show the works, and let everyone buzz in by phone.

6 categories · 30 clues · Final Jeopardy · everyone buzzes in from their phone

For college and exam prep

Copies all 30 clues into an editor of your own. Free, no account needed.

Every clue on this board

This page is public, so anyone can read the answers — copy the board and swap a few clues before game day.

Ancient and Classical

$200
This temple to Athena stands on the Acropolis in Athens.
What is the Parthenon?
$400
This plainest of the Greek column orders has a simple cushion-shaped capital and no base.
What is Doric?
$600
The Great Pyramid of Giza was built as the tomb of this Egyptian pharaoh.
Who is Khufu?
$800
This Roman temple, crowned by a huge unreinforced concrete dome with an oculus, was rebuilt under Hadrian.
What is the Pantheon?
$1,000
This Italian term names the relaxed pose with weight on one leg, seen in Polykleitos's Doryphoros.
What is contrapposto?

Medieval Art

$200
This embroidered cloth, about 70 meters long, tells the story of the Norman conquest of England in 1066.
What is the Bayeux Tapestry?
$400
Pointed arches, ribbed vaults and flying buttresses are hallmarks of this architectural style.
What is Gothic?
$600
Hand-decorated books with gold and bright colors, like the Book of Kells, are known by this name.
What are illuminated manuscripts?
$800
Byzantine artists at Ravenna built images out of small pieces of colored glass and stone called tesserae in this art form.
What is mosaic?
$1,000
This Florentine painter's Arena Chapel frescoes in Padua gave figures a new weight and naturalism.
Who is Giotto?

Renaissance Masters

$200
This artist painted the Mona Lisa.
Who is Leonardo da Vinci?
$400
This artist painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Who is Michelangelo?
$600
This painter's School of Athens decorates a room in the Vatican.
Who is Raphael?
$800
This Florentine painted The Birth of Venus for patrons in the Medici circle.
Who is Sandro Botticelli?
$1,000
This architect engineered the great dome of Florence Cathedral without traditional wooden centering.
Who is Filippo Brunelleschi?

Baroque and Rococo

$200
This Italian painter used dramatic contrasts of light and dark in The Calling of Saint Matthew.
Who is Caravaggio?
$400
This Dutch master painted the large militia group portrait known as The Night Watch.
Who is Rembrandt?
$600
This Italian term describes the modeling of forms through strong contrasts of light and shadow.
What is chiaroscuro?
$800
This Spanish court painter included himself at his easel in Las Meninas.
Who is Diego Velazquez?
$1,000
This French Rococo painter's The Swing shows a young woman kicking off her shoe.
Who is Jean-Honore Fragonard?

Impressionism and After

$200
This painter's Impression, Sunrise gave the Impressionist movement its name.
Who is Claude Monet?
$400
This Dutch painter created The Starry Night while staying at an asylum in Saint-Remy.
Who is Vincent van Gogh?
$600
Georges Seurat built A Sunday on La Grande Jatte out of tiny dots of color in this technique.
What is pointillism?
$800
This artist, known for pastels of ballet dancers, exhibited with the Impressionists.
Who is Edgar Degas?
$1,000
This Post-Impressionist painted Mont Sainte-Victoire again and again.
Who is Paul Cezanne?

Modern Movements

$200
Picasso and Braque broke objects into geometric planes seen from several viewpoints in this movement.
What is Cubism?
$400
Salvador Dali's The Persistence of Memory, with its melting watches, belongs to this movement.
What is Surrealism?
$600
Marcel Duchamp's Fountain, a signed urinal, is a key work of this anti-art movement.
What is Dada?
$800
Jackson Pollock's drip paintings belong to this postwar New York movement.
What is Abstract Expressionism?
$1,000
A 1905 Paris exhibition of intensely colored canvases by Matisse and Derain launched this movement.
What is Fauvism?

Final Jeopardy — Art and War

Painted in 1937, this large black, white, and gray mural by Pablo Picasso responds to the bombing of a Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

What is Guernica?

How to run this board

The board follows a typical survey: ancient and classical art, medieval art and architecture, the Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, and the modern movements of the twentieth century.

Art history is visual, so keep a slideshow of the relevant works ready and put each image up after its clue is answered. Seeing the piece right after naming it is exactly the recall slide IDs demand.

For a bonus, ask the answering team for the period or movement and one formal feature of the work. It rehearses the compare-and-contrast essays most survey exams include.

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