Kunst
8 cards from across every topic, each citing a source. Tap one to open it in the feed.
- An air raid on market day became the most famous anti-war painting.
On 26 April 1937, the German Condor Legion and Italian aircraft bombed the Basque town of Gernika for several hours on …
- An object with no history is an object with no value.
Provenance is the unbroken chain of ownership and location of an object. It decides authenticity, market value and …
- Ancient statues were brightly painted, not white.
Greek and Roman marble statues were originally painted: red lips, blue robes, gilded hair. The colour weathered away …
- European painters used ground-up mummies for centuries.
The pigment mummy brown was made of pulverised Egyptian mummies, white pitch and myrrh. Sales are documented from 1712 …
- Four teenagers and a dog found 17,000-year-old art.
In September 1940, four teenagers in the Dordogne discovered the Lascaux cave after their dog had sniffed out a hole …
- Michelangelo did not paint the Sistine Chapel lying down.
From 1508 to 1512, Michelangelo painted the roughly 500-square-metre ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, even though he …
- The Mona Lisa became world-famous because it was stolen.
On 21 August 1911 Louvre employee Vincenzo Peruggia hid in a broom closet and carried the painting out under his coat …
- The Terracotta Army was brightly coloured until we dug it up.
On 29 March 1974 farmers digging a well near Xi'an hit the figures – over 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots and hundreds of …