 |
What is the world's biggest painting? |
Many people have tried to create the world's biggest painting. You probably won’t see these works hanging in art museums--these are paintings that were made for the purpose, of well, being big!
Museums don’t generally give out information about the biggest painting, or the heaviest sculpture, or the tallest artwork in their collection. They want visitors to look at the paintings and think about the way they look, not how big they are. So there’s no one easy answer!
If we look at the people who created works of art for the record books, we’d have to include the 86,000 square foot painting made by Swedish artist David Aberg, confirmed in 2006 as the largest painting done by a single artist. It was done inside an aircraft hangar!
In India, a group of students made a painting this past year that was 4.2 kilometers (more than 2 miles) long to commemorate Gandhi’s birthday.
In Atlanta, GA, what’s advertised as the “World’s largest oil painting” has been on display for 115 years in the Atlanta Cyclorama and Civil War Museum. It shows the battle of Atlanta, which highlights a last attempt to keep Union troops from occupying the city. The painting covers 15,000 feet, weighs more than five tons, and is 42 feet tall and 358 feet in circumference.
The Sistine Chapel in Rome, part of the Vatican, includes paintings by many famous Renaissance artists, including Michelangelo. He painted 12,000 square feet of the chapel ceiling, showing religious scenes, in the 16th century.
Not as large but still pretty impressive: the Louvre’s Wedding at Cana by the 16th-century artist Paolo Veronese: It measures 262 inches x 390 inches, or approximately 21 feet x 32 feet.
It’s hard to compare paintings when they’re made of different materials and created on different surfaces. Paintings can be made with oil paints or watercolor on canvas; with charcoal and pigments on the walls of caves; on the ceiling of a church; even with colored sand on a floor! Some paintings are rectangular; others may be on a panorama that curves around the walls of a room; still others sprawl across the walls of a room.
