From a painting getting fan mail to 10 million dollar rewards, art is fascinating. Here are few interesting facts to brighten up your day.

Mona Lisa The Mona Lisa is smaller than you’d imagine! This renound painting measures only 30 inches in height by 21 inches wide.

10 Million Dollar Reward In 1990, Two men dressed as cops gained entry to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. They duct taped the security guards ad walked off with 13 works of art valued at over 500 million. The most famous painting was Rembrandt’s Storm on the Sea of Galilee. The museum is offering a 10 million dollar reward for the information leading to the recovering of the artwork.

Spendy Art The Most expensive painting ever sold at auction was the Salvator Mundi by Leonardo de Vinci. It sold for 450 million. The crazy part? The same painting auctioned for $60 back in 1958! 

Warhol Films Everyone recognizes the iconic soup cans of Andy Warhol as some of the greatest pop art in history. It’s less well known, however, that this artist also produced erotic films. Some of them include Pork, Kiss and Blowjob.

Cave Paintings The oldest known painting, depicting a bull, is from over 40,000 years ago. The cave, Lubang Jeriji Saleh, is located in Borneo. 

Incognito Banksy is a British street artist known for his subversive and thought provoking graffiti work. He’s one of the best graffiti artists in the world, yet his true identity remains unconfirmed. You can find his work mainly in and around London.

Happy Little Trees Bob Ross, the iconic painter of The Joy of Painting, didn’t receive any payment for the show. The PBS show ran for 11 years ending in 1994, and Bob could knock out an entire season in 2 days!

Artists of the Iron Curtain The Berlin Wall fell in 1989 ending the division between east and west Germany. Over time, it’s been torn down to a mere fraction of its original 87 mile length. The largest open air gallery, known as The East Side Gallery, features over 100 murals of amazing artwork painted directly onto a 4,000+ foot section of remaining wall.

Starry Night Van Gogh painted this well-known masterpiece from his room at Saint-Remy, a mental asylum, where he was recovering shortly after cutting off his own ear. This was the view from his room. He lived with undiagnosed mental health issues throughout his life before committing suicide in 1890.

Fan Mail The Mona Lisa receives so many letters and tokens of affection, she has her own mailbox at the Louvre. At one point, the letters she received were so passionately intense, she was placed under police protection.

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