Italian Science, Arts and Culture

Science Arts And Culture

490 practice questions, each with the answer and an explanation.

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All 490 questions

  1. Complete the sentence about Dante Alighieri with the correct year: The exact date of his birth is unknown, although it is believed to be around May ______.
  2. Complete the sentence about Dante Alighieri with the correct year: The Ghibellines took over Florence at the Battle of Montaperti in ______, forcing out many of the Guelphs.
  3. Complete the sentence about Dante Alighieri with the correct year: The Guelphs later fought the Ghibellines again in ______ at the Battle of Benevento, retaking Florence from the Ghibellines.
  4. Complete the sentence about Divine Comedy with the correct year: Florence's Guelphs split into factions around ______ – the White Guelphs and the Black Guelphs.
  5. Complete the sentence about Petrarch with the correct year: Petrarch was born in the Tuscan city Arezzo on 20 July ______.
  6. Complete the sentence about Petrarch with the correct year: After the death of their parents, Petrarch and his brother Gherardo went back to Avignon in ______, where he worked in numerous clerical off…
  7. Complete the sentence about Giovanni Boccaccio with the correct year: In ______, his father was appointed head of a bank and moved with his family to Naples.
  8. Complete the sentence about Ludovico Ariosto with the correct year: The cardinal went to Hungary in ______, and wished Ariosto to accompany him.
  9. Complete the sentence about Ludovico Ariosto with the correct year: In ______ the first version of the Orlando Furioso in 40 cantos, was published at Ferrara.
  10. Complete the sentence about Ludovico Ariosto with the correct year: The third and final version of the Orlando Furioso, in 46 cantos, appeared on 8 September ______.
  11. Complete the sentence about Torquato Tasso with the correct year: In ______, Torquato was living with his mother and his only sister Cornelia at Naples, pursuing his education under the Jesuits, who h…
  12. Complete the sentence about Torquato Tasso with the correct year: News reached them in ______ that Porzia Tasso had died suddenly and mysteriously at Naples.
  13. Complete the sentence about Torquato Tasso with the correct year: Therefore, when an opening at the court of Urbino was offered in ______, Bernardo Tasso gladly accepted it.
  14. Complete the sentence about Alessandro Manzoni with the correct year: In ______, his parents broke their marriage and his mother began a relationship with the writer Carlo Imbonati, moving to England…
  15. Complete the sentence about Alessandro Manzoni with the correct year: In ______, Cuoco entrusted the nineteen year old Manzoni with the editing of his novel Platone in Italia.
  16. Complete the sentence about Alessandro Manzoni with the correct year: Manzoni sojourned in Venice from the fall of ______ to the spring of the following year.
  17. Complete the sentence about Giacomo Leopardi with the correct year: In ______ the classicist Pietro Giordani arrived at the Leopardi estate.
  18. Complete the sentence about Giacomo Leopardi with the correct year: Meanwhile, his life at Recanati weighed on him increasingly, to the point where he attempted to escape in ______, but he was caught…
  19. Complete the sentence about Giacomo Leopardi with the correct year: When in ______ he was briefly able to stay in Rome with his uncle, he was deeply disappointed by its atmosphere of corruption and de…
  20. Complete the sentence about Giacomo Leopardi with the correct year: In ______, a bookstore owner, Stella, called him to Milan, asking him to write several works, including Crestomazia della prosa e de…
  21. Complete the sentence about Giacomo Leopardi with the correct year: In ______ in Florence, Leopardi met Alessandro Manzoni, although they did not see things eye to eye.
  22. Complete the sentence about Giacomo Leopardi with the correct year: In ______, physically infirm and worn out by work, Leopardi refused the offer of a professorship in Bonn or Berlin, made by the Amba…
  23. Complete the sentence about Giosuè Carducci with the correct year: In ______, he became the first Italian to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.
  24. Complete the sentence about Giosuè Carducci with the correct year: A member of the Carboneria, in his youth he had suffered imprisonment for his share in the revolution of ______.
  25. Complete the sentence about Giosuè Carducci with the correct year: After the failure of the revolution of ______, the Carducci family was obliged to move.
  26. Complete the sentence about Giovanni Verga with the correct year: In ______ Verga settled in Milan and had direct contact with Scapigliatura writers.
  27. Complete the sentence about Giovanni Verga with the correct year: In ______ Verga published a collection of his stories—all either late Romantic or Scapigliato in manner—as Primavera e altri racconti.
  28. Complete the sentence about Luigi Pirandello with the correct year: Pirandello was of Greek descent, as he noted himself in an interview to Kostas Ouranis in ______.
  29. Complete the sentence about Italo Svevo with the correct year: Following the death of his parents, Svevo married his cousin Livia Veneziani in a civil ceremony in ______.
  30. Complete the sentence about Italo Svevo with the correct year: In ______ Italo Svevo published the psychological novel La Coscienza di Zeno.
  31. Complete the sentence about Italo Svevo with the correct year: Joyce had met Svevo in ______, when Joyce tutored him in English, while working for Berlitz in Trieste.
  32. Complete the sentence about Italo Calvino with the correct year: Italo Calvino was born in Santiago de las Vegas, a suburb of Havana, Cuba, in ______.
  33. Complete the sentence about Italo Calvino with the correct year: Born 47 years earlier in Sanremo, Italy, Mario Calvino had emigrated to Mexico in ______ where he took up an important position with th…
  34. Complete the sentence about Italo Calvino with the correct year: In ______, Mario left for Cuba to conduct scientific experiments, after living through the Mexican Revolution.
  35. Complete the sentence about Italo Calvino with the correct year: In ______, less than two years after Calvino's birth, the family returned to Italy and settled permanently in Sanremo on the Ligurian c…
  36. Complete the sentence about Italo Calvino with the correct year: Calvino's brother Floriano, who became a distinguished geologist, was born in ______.
  37. Complete the sentence about Umberto Eco with the correct year: Eco was born on 5 January ______ in the city of Alessandria, in Piedmont in northern Italy.
  38. Complete the sentence about Umberto Eco with the correct year: In ______, Eco left RAI and the University of Turin to complete 18 months of compulsory military service in the Italian Army.
  39. Complete the sentence about Umberto Eco with the correct year: In ______ he left to become Professor of Semiotics at Milan Polytechnic, spending his first year as a visiting professor at New York Univ…
  40. Complete the sentence about Umberto Eco with the correct year: Following the publication of A Theory of Semiotics in ______, he was promoted to Professor of Semiotics at the University of Bologna.
  41. Complete the sentence about The Name of the Rose with the correct year: In ______, Franciscan friar William of Baskerville and his assistant Adso of Melk arrive at a Benedictine abbey in Northern Ital…
  42. Complete the sentence about Primo Levi with the correct year: Levi was born in ______ in Turin, at Corso Re Umberto 75, into a liberal Jewish family.
  43. Complete the sentence about Primo Levi with the correct year: In ______, Anna Maria, Levi's sister, was born, and he remained close to her all her life.
  44. Complete the sentence about Primo Levi with the correct year: In ______, he entered the Felice Rignon primary school in Turin.
  45. Complete the sentence about Primo Levi with the correct year: In September ______, Levi entered the Massimo d'Azeglio Royal Gymnasium a year ahead of normal entrance requirements.
  46. Complete the sentence about Elena Ferrante with the correct year: Time magazine called Ferrante one of the 100 most influential people in ______.
  47. Complete the sentence about Carlo Collodi with the correct year: In ______, he started working at the Florentine bookstore Libreria Piatti, where he assisted Giuseppe Aiazzi, a prominent Italian manus…
  48. Complete the sentence about Carlo Collodi with the correct year: In ______, for instance, he completed Racconti delle fate, a translation of French fairy tales by Charles Perrault.
  49. Complete the sentence about Pinocchio with the correct year: Collodi originally intended the story, which was first published in June ______ in the children's magazine Giornale per i bambini, to be a…
  50. Complete the sentence about Grazia Deledda with the correct year: In October ______, Deledda met Palmiro Madesani, a functionary of the Ministry of Finance, in Cagliari.
  51. Complete the sentence about Grazia Deledda with the correct year: In ______ she published Elias Portolu, which was met with commercial and critical success, boosting her reputation as a writer.
  52. Complete the sentence about Grazia Deledda with the correct year: In ______ Cenere was the inspiration for a silent movie with famed Italian actress Eleonora Duse.
  53. Complete the sentence with the correct year: In ______ he was a signatory to the Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals.
  54. Complete the sentence about Eugenio Montale with the correct year: Montale moved to Florence in ______ to work as an editor for the publisher Bemporad.
  55. Complete the sentence about Eugenio Montale with the correct year: In ______, for Eliot's sixtieth birthday, Montale contributed a celebratory essay titled "Eliot and Ourselves" to a collection publis…
  56. Complete the sentence about Salvatore Quasimodo with the correct year: In ______ his family moved to Messina, as his father had been sent there to help the local population struck by a devastating ear…
  57. Complete the sentence about Salvatore Quasimodo with the correct year: In ______ he moved to Rome to finish his engineering studies, but poor economic conditions forced him to find work as a technical…
  58. Complete the sentence about Salvatore Quasimodo with the correct year: In ______, invited by Elio Vittorini, who had married Quasimodo's sister, he moved to Florence.
  59. Complete the sentence about Salvatore Quasimodo with the correct year: In ______ he took a job with Italy's Civil Engineering Corps in Reggio Calabria.
  60. Complete the sentence about Dario Fo with the correct year: In ______, Fo moved to Milan to study at the Academy Brera Academy.
  61. Complete the sentence about Italian literature with the correct year: In ______, the Sicilian School became notable for being the first style in standard Italian.
  62. Complete the sentence about Leonardo da Vinci with the correct year: Upon the invitation of Francis I, he spent his last three years in France, where he died in ______.
  63. Complete the sentence about Leonardo da Vinci with the correct year: Having been betrothed to her the previous year, Ser Piero married Albiera Amadori and after her death in ______, went on to have th…
  64. Complete the sentence about Leonardo da Vinci with the correct year: Ser Piero, who was the descendant of a long line of notaries, established an official residence in Florence by at least ______ and…
  65. Complete the sentence about Mona Lisa with the correct year: King Francis I of France acquired the Mona Lisa after Leonardo's death in ______, and it later became the property of the French Republic.
  66. Complete the sentence about Mona Lisa with the correct year: Vasari's account of the Mona Lisa comes from his biography of Leonardo published in ______, 31 years after the artist's death.
  67. Complete the sentence about Mona Lisa with the correct year: Leonardo's assistant Salaì, at his death in ______, owned a portrait which in his personal papers was named la Gioconda, a painting bequeat…
  68. Complete the sentence about David with the correct year: In ______, the statue was moved to the Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence.
  69. Complete the sentence about Pietà with the correct year: The official rite of coronation was executed on 31 August ______.
  70. Complete the sentence about Raphael with the correct year: Castiglione moved to Urbino in ______, when Raphael was no longer based there but frequently visited, and they became good friends.
  71. Complete the sentence about School of Athens with the correct year: A ______ tapestry reproduction by the Gobelins Manufactory and commissioned by Louis XIV hangs above the presiding officer's platfor…
  72. Complete the sentence about Sandro Botticelli with the correct year: In ______ Botticelli's father ceased his business as a tanner and became a gold-beater with his other son, Antonio.
  73. Complete the sentence about The Birth of Venus with the correct year: In ______ Vasari was himself painting in the villa, but he very possibly visited it before that.
  74. Complete the sentence about Titian with the correct year: In ______, the painter and art theorist Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo described Titian as "the sun amidst small stars not only among the Italians but…
  75. Complete the sentence about Titian with the correct year: When he was an old man he claimed in a letter to Philip II of Spain to have been born in ______, but this seems most unlikely.
  76. Complete the sentence about Caravaggio with the correct year: In ______, he returned to Naples, where he was involved in a violent clash; his face was disfigured, and rumours of his death circulated.
  77. Complete the sentence about Giotto with the correct year: Since ______, a tower house in nearby Colle Vespignano has borne a plaque claiming the honor of his birthplace, an assertion that is commercia…
  78. Complete the sentence about Giotto with the correct year: By ______, Giotto owned a house in Florence, and when he was not traveling, he would return there and live in comfort with his family.
  79. Complete the sentence about Giotto with the correct year: John Lateran houses a small portion of a fresco cycle, painted for the Jubilee of ______ called by Boniface VIII.
  80. Complete the sentence about Donatello with the correct year: The banker Bardis were still wealthy and powerful, despite the default of Edward III of England in ______ having caused the failure of thei…
  81. Complete the sentence about Donatello with the correct year: After Contessina de' Bardi married Cosimo de' Medici around ______, any connection he had might still have been useful to Donatello.
  82. Complete the sentence about Filippo Brunelleschi with the correct year: In ______, Brunelleschi became the first person to receive a patent in the Western world.
  83. Complete the sentence about Filippo Brunelleschi with the correct year: Around the end of ______, the city of Florence decided to create a second pair of new sculpted and gilded bronze doors for the F…
  84. Complete the sentence about Filippo Brunelleschi with the correct year: A competition was held in ______ for the design, which drew seven competitors, including Brunelleschi and another young sculptor…
  85. Complete the sentence about Bernini with the correct year: Bernini was born on 7 December ______ in Naples to Angelica Galante, a Neapolitan, and Mannerist sculptor Pietro Bernini, originally from Flo…
  86. Complete the sentence with the correct year: In ______, Pope Paul V Borghese was succeeded on the throne of St.
  87. Complete the sentence about Canova with the correct year: In ______, Antonio Canova was born in the Venetian Republic city of Possagno to Pietro Canova, a stonecutter, and Angela Zardo Fantolin.
  88. Complete the sentence about Canova with the correct year: In ______, Canova opened his own studio at Calle Del Traghetto at S.
  89. Complete the sentence about Tintoretto with the correct year: The Embarkation of St Helena was acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum in ______.
  90. Complete the sentence about Tintoretto with the correct year: In ______ Tintoretto was commissioned to paint a large decoration for the Scuola di S.
  91. Complete the sentence about Tintoretto with the correct year: Around ______ he painted the Assumption of the Virgin, an oil-on-canvas painting for the church of Santa Maria dei Crociferi.
  92. Complete the sentence about Amedeo Modigliani with the correct year: In ______, he moved to Paris, where he came into contact with such artists as Pablo Picasso and Constantin Brâncuși.
  93. Complete the sentence about Amedeo Modigliani with the correct year: By ______, Modigliani was exhibiting highly stylised sculptures with Cubists of the Section d'Or group at the Salon d'Automne.
  94. Complete the sentence about Umberto Boccioni with the correct year: Umberto Boccioni was born on 19 October ______ in Reggio Calabria.
  95. Complete the sentence about Umberto Boccioni with the correct year: At the age of 15, in ______, Umberto and his father moved to Catania, Sicily, where he would finish school.
  96. Complete the sentence about Umberto Boccioni with the correct year: Returning to Italy in ______, he briefly took drawing classes at the Accademia di Belle Arti of Venice.
  97. Complete the sentence about Futurism with the correct year: Futurism is an avant-garde movement founded in Milan, Italy in ______ by the Italian art theorist and poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.
  98. Complete the sentence about Futurism with the correct year: When Italy entered the First World War in ______, many Futurists enlisted in the Royal Italian Army.
  99. Complete the sentence about Futurism with the correct year: The Florence group had formally acknowledged their withdrawal from the movement by the end of ______.
  100. Complete the sentence about Italian architecture with the correct year: Italy has a broad and diverse architectural style, which cannot be classified by period or region, due to Italy's division into…

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