How to date a painting
Dating a painting from one look is hard. Check a few things in order, though, and you can cut centuries down to decades. Here's the order, how scoring works here, and the clues that help most.
What this quiz is
You see one museum artwork and guess when and where it was made. Photo guessing games like this took off online. This one does it with paintings.
We don't decide the answers. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's public record does. Even when you miss, you get the title, artist and medium, so every game leaves you knowing five more paintings.
The basic order
Start with the region. Ink on silk or a hanging scroll points to East Asia. A small book painting with gold and fine borders often means West or South Asia. Oil on canvas is usually Europe or the Americas.
Then pick the broad era. A gold background with saints lined up and a painting built from light and shadow are usually centuries apart.
Finally, look for things that date quickly: clothes, buildings, vehicles. Use them to narrow down to decades.
How this quiz picks and scores
Five paintings a day, the same for everyone. We only use images the museum has released for any use.
The answer is the record's start and end year. If it's a range, like 1650 to 1660, any year inside scores full points. Outside, you lose points with distance: about 82% left at 10 years, 37% at 50.
For the country we use the first value the record has among culture, country and artist nationality. European and American paintings usually only list artist nationality, so there the answer is the artist's nationality, not where it was painted. The answer screen says which field it was.
We leave out paintings whose date range is wider than 40 years, copies, and country questions where the record names more than one place.
Clues that narrow the era
Check the material. In Europe, painting on wooden panels in tempera gave way to oil on canvas from around the 15th century. A gold-ground panel suggests an early date.
Check the perspective. Floor tiles and building lines that meet at one point came into use in 15th-century Italy. Earlier paintings often look flat.
Check the brushwork. Short, visible strokes and bright outdoor light can point to French Impressionism in the late 19th century.
Getting closer
Look at clothes. Ruffled white collars, high-waisted dresses and top hats were in fashion for short spells and can pin down decades.
Look at machines. Trains, steamships or gas lamps mean the 19th century or later.
Japanese woodblock prints (ukiyo-e) have crisp lines and flat color. Ukiyo-e flourished in the Edo period (17th to 19th century), so start there and narrow down.
When you're stuck
No idea at all? At least pick the region and go for the middle of its likely range. Even 100 years off keeps about 14%.
Similar country options? Dutch, Flemish and Netherlandish are neighbors. We use the record's own words, so the original value on the answer screen explains the answer.
Record looks odd? Open the museum page to see the original entry. We don't change those values.