Sculptures: Art Carved in Time!

#80 Week 17

Author

Sigrun Sørumgård
April 22, 2025

How well do you know the world’s most famous sculptures, and the artists, history and places behind them?

  1. What is the name of the famous Greek armless marble sculpture in the Louvre?

  2. Which sculptor is known for his "David", carved in marble in the early 16th century?

  3. What is the name of the famous sculpture by Auguste Rodin, in which a man sits with his head "resting" on his hand?

  4. What is the name of the famous Danish bronze sculpture depicting a character from a H.C. Andersen fairy tale?

  5. Which American pop artist created sculptures of inflatable steel figures that look like balloon animals?

  6. Perseus with the Severed Head of Medusa from 1554 is considered the Italian sculptor Cellini's masterpiece, but in which Italian city can this statue be found?

  7. What is the name of the iconic monument with four heads carved into the rock in the United States?

  8. What was the purpose of the Terracotta Army, discovered in 1974 in China and dating back to about 210 BCE?

  9. What is the name of the giant spider sculpture by Louise Bourgeois, which can be found in several cities?

  10. The sculpture is affectionately called "The Bean" by its city residents for its curved ellipsoidal shape, made of mirror steel. In which city can we find this sculpture?

The Wonder Wall

  • The history of sculpture, as we know it, began in the Paleolithic period, in the last part of the Stone Age, a period that lasted until about the end of the last ice age. One of the oldest examples we know of is a small figurative sculpture known as the "lion man", which is believed to be as much as forty thousand years old.

  • The Nefertiti bust of painted limestone was made about 1345 years before the birth of Christ. But Queen Nefertiti radiates beauty to this day. The work is probably the most copied from ancient Egypt. The bust is now in the Neues Museum in Berlin.

  • The Lewis pieces are some of the most famous examples of the sculpture tradition in Europe, in many ways completely separate from the Romanesque tradition that led to the Italian Renaissance. The Lewis pieces are both tabula and chess pieces, the latter in the form of exquisite small sculptures representing the entire chess hierarchy. The theory is that the pieces were carved in Trondheim, despite being found on the Scottish island of Lewis in the Hebrides. The pieces are made of walrus bone and whale teeth, and they have meticulous and caricatured details that testify to both humour and formal certainty. Today they are exhibited in the Royal Museum in Edinburgh and the British Museum in London.

Yesterday´s Questions & Answers

  1. What is the process called when a substance changes from a liquid to a gas?

    Evaporation. The weaker the intermolecular forces in the substance, the faster the evaporation occurs. Substance moving from the gas phase to the liquid phase is called condensation.

  2. Which gas emission contributes most to the greenhouse effect?

    Carbon dioxide (CO₂)

  3. What is the process called when plants make sugar using sunlight?

    Photosynthesis. In photosynthesis, plants capture sunlight with the help of a green substance in their leaves called chlorophyll. Chlorophyll uses solar energy to start a chemical reaction.

  4. What is a water molecule made of?

    Two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.

  5. What is the chemical formula for table salt?

    Table salt is the chemical compound also known as common salt, kitchen salt, or table salt. Table salt is the common name for this compound, which has the chemical name sodium chloride and the chemical formula NaCl.

  6. What is an isotope?

    A variant of an element with an odd number of neutrons.

  7. What is the chemical formula for ammonia?

    Ammonia is a chemical compound of nitrogen and hydrogen. It is a colourless gas with a pungent odour that is readily soluble in water. The chemical formula for ammonia is NH3.

  8. What is the chemical formula for ethanol (alcohol)?

    Ethanol has the chemical formula C2H5OH, and is a colourless liquid with a specific gravity of 0.78 kg/l that is miscible with water in concentrations up to 96.6%.

  9. What is the atomic nucleus made of?

    The atomic nucleus itself is made of protons, which have a positive charge, and neutrons, which have no electrical charge.

  10. What is the pH value of pure water?

    A neutral solution, pure water, has a pH of 7. Solutions with a pH below 7 are acidic, those with a pH above 7 are alkaline.