Who Painted It
Match famous paintings to their painters in a free, timed browser game. Twenty works, four names each.
ArtArt Words
Art has its own precise vocabulary, and these words describe technique rather than style. Below: the terms that appear in galleries and textbooks, and the plain-English sense of each.
Choose your difficulty
Pick a level to start playing. You can switch at any time.
How to play
Read the term, then tap what it means.
Tip: your progress and best score are saved in this browser only.
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ArtWhat you are actually practicing
Art has a precise vocabulary, and these particular words describe technique rather than style. Chiaroscuro is not a "dark style" — it is a way of using light. Fresco is not a "wall painting style" — it is a method that dictates the wall.
Learning them makes museum labels and art history textbooks readable rather than decorative. It also gives you the ability to describe what you see, which is the real point of looking at pictures.
How the game works
You are shown a term and four meanings. Pick the meaning. A wrong pick reveals the answer immediately.
Easy uses the commonest words. Medium widens the set. Hard uses the full list.
The terms worth knowing
Chiaroscuro — strong contrast between light and dark. Tenebrism — the same idea pushed to extremes, with darkness dominating.
Impasto — paint applied thickly so the brushstrokes stay visible. Fresco — painting on fresh, wet plaster.
Still life — arranged inanimate objects. Trompe-l'œil — a deception of the eye. Grisaille — painting entirely in shades of grey.
Foreshortening — showing an object as seen from an angle. Nocturne — a night scene. Bauhaus — plain geometry and function.
Strategies that actually raise your score
Learn them as pairs. Chiaroscuro and tenebrism are two intensities of the same idea; fresco and encaustic are two painting methods. Pairs are cheaper than lists and they cancel each other's distractors.
Anchor on the word's root. "Impasto" comes from pasto, paste; "grisaille" from gris, grey; "fresco" means fresh. The roots are often more memorable than the definitions.
Remember the two about method. Fresco and impasto describe how the paint is put on the surface, which is what makes them technique words rather than style words.