Art

World's largest art gallery

The world's largest art gallery is the Winter Palace and the neighboring Hermitage in Leningrad, U.S.S.R.  One has to walk fifteen miles to visit each of the 322 galleries, which house nearly 3 million works of art and archaeological remains.

Most valuable painting in the world
The Mona Lisa, completed by Leonardo da Vinci in 1503, is considered the most valuable painting in the world. In 1962, its value was assessed for insurance purposes at $100 million. The painting, which hangs in the Louvre, apparently portrays the Duchess of Milan. But legend has it that its subject is Mona (short for Madonna ) Lisa Gherardini, whose husband Francesco del Giocondo of Florence, is said to have disliked the painting and refused to pay da Vinci for it. Francis 1, King of France, bought it about ten years later for 492 ounces of gold (now equivalent to about $300,000).

The largest painting in the world
The largest painting in the world is "The Battle of Gettysburg", painted in 1883 by Paul Philippoteaux and sixteen assistants, who worked for two and a half years. It is 410 feet long, 70 feet high, and weighs 11,792 pounds. In 1964, the painting was bought by Joe king of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

The Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty was first erected in Paris, where, on July 4, 1884, the government of France officially presented it to the United States. Five months later, the French dismantled the statue and shipped the carefully numbered pieces to New York aboard the warship Isère. The statue is the work of the Alsatian sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi. (A smaller version was erected on one of the islands [Isle of Swan] in the Seine River in Paris.)

Painting Sold by Van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh is known to have sold only one painting.

Picasso's Genius
Students were given a month to complete the competitive art examination at the estimable Barcelona Academy of Fine Arts. Picasso, at the age of fifteen, completed the examination in one day and, furthermore, won first place over all adult competitors.