Pictures at an Exhibition - May I Kiss You Quiz

Answer: Joachim and Anna

Isaac and Rebecca were married, but lived many generations before the Virgin Mary. According to the Gospel of Matthew, Isaac was the fortieth generation before Saint Joseph (see Matthew 1:2 -1:17).
Moses seems to be not related to Jesus Christ, although a genealogy of forty-two generations as mentioned in Matthew 1:1 - 1:17 doesn't take in account all branches. However, Moses and Zipporah lived several generations before Saint Joseph and the Virgin Mary.
Zacharias and Elisabeth were close relatives of Mary's. Indeed: Elisabeth and Mary were cousins, and they found out they were each expecting a child at the same time. Mary bore Jesus Christ, and Elisabeth gave birth to John the Baptist. Luke 1:39-45 elaborates on the time Mary and Elisabeth told each other that they were pregnant.
Joachim and Anne are the parents of the Virgin Mary. They don't appear in the official Bible books, only the apocryphal gospels mention them.
By the way, the "Golden Gate" mentioned in the title of this fresco is a gate in Jerusalem, not the strait near San Francisco. According to the gospel of James, Joachim went to the Golden Gate in Jerusalem because a vision had told him so. When they met, Anne declared herself to be pregnant of a daughter (they knew because of a divine vision - the medical science was not yet advanced enough to establish the gender of an unborn child).
Giotto di Bondone (1266-1337) was one of the earliest Italian Renaissance painters. The Scrovegni Chapel is his masterpiece.

Answer: The Garden of Earthly Delights

Hieronymus Bosch (born "Van Aken", 1450-1516) was a Dutch painter best known for his apocalyptic scenes. "The Garden of Earthly Delights" shows us all kind of earthly sins, and was probably intended to show what happened before Bosch' other painting, "The Last Judgment".
The other paintings ("Ship of Fools" and "Extraction of the Stone of Madness") are also made by Bosch. "Extraction" shows us a barber trying to perform a lobotomy without anaesthesia (ouch!), and "Ship of Fools" depicts an expedition of people who seem to have escaped from an asylum for the mentally deficient.
For those of you who think they can observe "The Garden of Earthly Delights" without getting nightmares, I advise you to open Google Earth. Under the topic "Madrid, Prado" you can click on some paintings and get an enlarged view of the painting, with a resolution up to 14000 mega pixels.

Answer: Quentin Metsys

Hendrik Avercamp (1585-1634) was a Dutch Baroque painter. He specialised in (winter) landscapes. There is no record of any "Madonna" by this painter.
Christoffer Eckersberg (1783-1853) was a Danish painter. He is best known for some female nudes.
Michel Anguier (1612-1686) and his senior brother François (1604-1669) were French Baroque sculptors and architects. While François sculpted some of his contemporary compatriots, Michel was mainly inspired by Greek mythology. Michel sculpted "Ceres" and "Amphitrite", and François is best known for the mausoleum of Montmorency.
The only Flemish artist mentioned in this question is Quentin Metsys (1466-1530). He was born and trained in Louvain, and started his career in Antwerp. Both his sons Jan (1509-1575) and Cornelis (1510-1557) followed in his footsteps. Quentin's best known paintings are "The Moneylender and His Wife" (1514) and "The Ugly Duchess" (1515) - also known as "A Grotesque Old Woman".

Answer: A medallion

Surely you didn't pick the altar? The decoration represents a notorious case of adultery, and was inspired by a polytheistic mythology. For both of these reasons, it would be deemed unfit to decorate a Catholic church.
Cellini (1500-1571) was a goldsmith and sculptor whose masterpiece was a salt-cellar made of gold, ebony and enamel for the French King Francis I. However, it doesn't represent Leda and the swan, but Neptune (or Poseidon in the Greek tradition) and one of his beloved nymphs, perhaps Amphitrite.
I haven't found any platter or dish decorated by Cellini. His elaborate style would probably diminish the usefulness of any dish or platter he would decorate.
"Leda and the Swan" was represented on a medallion made for Gabbriello Cesarino. It was a golden relief on a bluish gemstone, decorated on the edge with many pearls.

Answer: Antonio Canova

All these artists were Italian, but only one of them was mainly a sculptor.
Giacomo Quarenghi (1744-1817) was granted the function of main architect by Tsarina Catharine the Great. In this capacity, he designed several buildings in Saint Petersburg, including the theatre in the Hermitage.
Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916) was a painter, but is best remembered for his sculpture "Unique Forms of Continuity in Space" - a figure representing a marching man, but without any arms and without a recognisable face. This Futuristic sculpture is also displayed on the reverse of the coin of 20 eurocents made in Italy.
Giovanni Bellini (1430-1516) was a Venetian painter, son of Iacopo (1400-1471) and brother of Gentile (1429-1507). All three specialised in religious paintings.
Antonio Canova (1757-1822) is the artist we were looking for in this question. Other works of his are a "Portrait of Paulina Borghese as Venus Victrix", the tomb for Pope Clement XIII, and a portrait of George Washington.

Answer: Ukiyo-e

Origami is the art of folding paper. A common Japanese theme for origami artists is the crane.
Ikebana is the arrangement of flowers and other organic materials, often in a minimalist design.
Anime is the Japanese word for animated pictures. In Japanese anime, the eyes of most characters are larger than the natural proportions would suggest.
Ukiyo-e is a Japanese word for "the floating world", meaning the world of all kind of entertainers (for example theatre players, geisha, prostitutes). Pictures of ukiyo-e include portraits of notorious kabuki players and of well-praised prostitutes, as well as landscapes with or without typical inns. Some famous ukiyo-e artists were Kitagawa Utamaro (1753-1806), Katsushige Hokusai (1760-1849) and Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858). The paintings to which I referred in this question are Utamaro's "The Lovers" (1788) and Hokusai's "Adonis Plant" (1822). Hokusai is of course better known for his "Great Wave off Kanagawa" (1832).
Many French Impressionists collected ukiyo-e prints. We thank these French painters for the notoriety of the ukiyo-e prints.
By the way, a xylography is a print made by using a woodblock, in the same way as lithography is printing by means of a stone impregnated with ink.

Answer: Kissing her dog

If one did not know the painting and just analysed the title, then the option "rowing a boat" could make sense. However, most people don't row a boat when at a luncheon party.
The portrayed girl was named Aline Charigot and worked as a seamstress. Nevertheless, she is not hemming a dress in this painting.
"Stabbing a bathing young man" was the activity that made Charlotte Corday world famous. Charlotte killed the French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat in 1793 when he took his bath. Jean-Louis David made, even the same year, his notorious portrait "Death of Marat".
Aline Charigot, in the painting by Renoir, is trying to kiss her dog. Remember the title of this quiz: it should deal with some sort of kissing.
Renoir (1841-1919) was a French Impressionist painter. His son Jean (1894-1979) was one of the first famous French movie directors.
By the way, there are other artworks that depict some human kissing some non-human. I'll give you some examples of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century. The French Realist Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) painted a nude young woman kissing a dog in 1862; the British Johann Heinrich Füssli (1741-1825, of Swiss origin) painted the nymph Titania (in a human appearance) kissing a person with a bull's head; the French painter and sculptor Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) displayed the sculptor Pygmalion kissing his statue of Galatea; the Belgian painter Constant Montald (1862-1944) depicted a young woman kissing a nest with three birds; and the German Symbolist painter Max Klinger (1857-1920) painted a young man making love to a siren. In this last painting, you can see the siren's tail entangling the man's legs.

Answer: Paolo and Francesca

"Lancelot and Guinevere" refers to the Arthurian legends and has no link with Italy. Guinevere, wife of King Arthur, fell in love with Arthur's loyal knight. One of the most famous artists who depicted Lancelot and Guinevere was Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882).
"Romeo and Juliet" is of course one of the most famous love affairs. In the tragedy by Shakespeare, the two title characters fall in love in spite of the feud between their families. The English painter Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893) painted the well known balcony scene in 1870.
"Tarquin and Lucretia" refers to an episode of early Roman history - the Roman Kingdom, an era so distant that we cannot distinguish legend from factual history. The story tells how Tarquin, son of the seventh and last King of Rome, took Lucretia by force. Ashamed of this incident, she told her family what had happened and then committed suicide. Titian (Tiziano Vecello, 1488-1576) painted the rape of Lucretia, and Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606-1669) painted Lucretia in the act of committing suicide.
"The Kiss" by Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) depicts Paolo Malatesta (1246-1285) and his sister-in-law Francesca da Rimini (1255-1285). Francesca was married to Paolo's brother Giovanni, but fell in love with Paolo. After all, Giovanni was allegedly deformed and Paolo was quite handsome. When Giovanni caught Paolo and Francesca "in flagrante delicto", he killed them on the spot. Jean Dominique Auguste Ingres (1780-1867) completed a painting in which Giovanni reaches for his sword, as he sees the adulterous couple red-handed (or red-cheeked?).
Here's some information about the artists mentioned in this question.
Rossetti was a founder of the pre-Raphaelite movement: a group of British artists having adopted a style which reminds us of the early Renaissance, to protest against complicating art. Madox Brown was a later adept of this movement.
Titian was a Venetian Renaissance painter. His masterworks are (to name only a few) the "Venus of Urbino", "Danae", "Portrait of Eleonora de Gonzaga" and "Charles V at Mühlberg". Rembrandt was a prolific Dutch Baroque painter who left us hundreds of paintings. A few highlights: "The Night Watch" and "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp". Ingres was a French Romantic painter, known for his "Grande Odalisque". Rodin was a French sculptor, who apparently did not belong to one of the classical art movements. His works are best described as "Realistic".

Answer: Gustav Klimt

All the options I've given in this question were Austrian artists.
Hundertwasser (1928-2000, born Friedrich Stowasser) was a painter and architect, best remembered for his constructions. In Vienna you'll find a power plant and an apartment building he designed. The apartment building was named after him. Adolf Loos (1870-1933), one of the pioneers of Functionalism, and Otto Wagner (1841-1918) were also Austrian architects. None of these architects produced a painting entitled "The Kiss". Hundertwasser worked in Europe and America, while Loos and Wagner restricted their terrain to Central Europe.
Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) is the artist we're looking for. The golden background is very typical of his paintings. You'll find the same style of background in his other masterpieces "Portrait of Adèle Bloch-Bauer I" and "Danaë".

Answer: Marc Chagall

If you can't imagine what I'm talking about, go find out yourself. You can order a reproduction of this painting on different websites (just search images that correspond to "Birthday Marc Chagall"). Or you could visit the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Felicien Rops (1833-1898) was a Belgian painter who never obtained French nationality. Most of his artworks were considered "X-rated" (if this qualification could already apply). For example, his painting "Pornocrates" shows us a woman walking her pig. The woman in the painting wears a large hat, a white blindfold, long black gloves, silk stockings just above the knee and shoes with high heels, and a blue ribbon around her belly. But she shows frankly the body parts most women would like to keep undercover.
Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) was a French Impressionist painter. He is well known for his still-lives composed of flowers and fruits. He also made a series of paintings of a hill situated near his home: "Mont Sainte Victoire", depicted in various weather conditions.
Edgar Degas (1834-1917) was another French Impressionist painter and sculptor. His main source of inspiration was the ballet and horse racing. Famous artworks of his include the paintings "The Dance Class" and "Ballet Rehearsal", and the sculpture "Little Dancer of Fourteen Years".
The painter who made the dazzling painting "Birthday" was Marc Chagall (1887-1985), born in Belarus. His masterpieces include "I and the Village" (1911) and "The Bride" (1950). He also made stained glass widows for the German church Saint Stephens in Mainz.

Sources for this quiz include: "Baci" edited by Mondadori SpA, Milan in 2008; "World History" by Carl Grimberg; "7000 Years of World History" edited by Christoph Columbus Verlag AG; "Verschueren Groot Encyclopedisch Woordenboek"; "Le Petit Larousse"; the Encarta Encyclopedia on CD-ROM; and some online sources: the Catholic Encyclopedia; the Web Gallery of Art; the Webmuseum; Artnet; and Wikipedia.