iOS – Master Pieces: The Curator’s Game for iPhone – Review

Once you have downloaded this app, it retails for $2.99/£1.99, you’re in for a treat. There are three initial sections to choose from, these include Foreword, Play Games and View Gallery. The foreword explains in more detail what this app is all about and gives a great background to the history.

If you select Play Games for the first time you will need to create a Player name, just type in something memorable. You then get to choose two styles of games, either Study Then Guess or Guess The Artist. The iPad has a third game called Match Three Details but this is not available in the iPhone version, at the moment.

Study Then Guess allows you to study six presented masterpieces and memorize the artists names. Once you’re ready to begin you need to guess the artist that painted each detail in the artwork. It’s a challenge but a really great one. Multiple choice answers are available to select and there’s also a Hint feature. The Hint feature gives you a little extra information regarding the artist, perhaps where he painted the art, something that might trigger that grey matter into action.

Guess The Artist allows you to jump right in and see how many randomly selected details you can identify from the catalog of 54 included masterpieces.

The third option from the beginning of this app is View Gallery, within this section you will find the complete 54 paintings from which all the details are taken. All the artists and their paintings are arranged in chronological order. There are essays that also accompany the paintings and give more information and background to each artist’s life and work. The essays are fascinating as they are written from personal experience and the reader can glean so much from them. We found the essays almost as enthralling as the gallery itself.

Image above by Leonardo da Vinci ‘Woman with an Ermine’ – 1483-90

There are so many aspects to this app that make it brilliant. You do not have to be an art buff by any means to appreciate it. If you have always admired art and wanted to learn more but didn’t know where to start, then this app is ideal. In addition though, if you already consider yourself an art buff then you will enjoy some of the more challenging aspects of this app to hone your knowledge.

It is enjoyable in so many ways, you can learn so much in a short time but you don’t feel like you really are. That’s is until it comes to playing the games and you realize you’ve remembered so much.

Works by the following artists are included: Blume, Bosch, Boticelli, Brueghel, Canaletto, Carravagio, Chagall, Constable, Cosimo, Dali, Degas, Delacroix, El Greco, Ensor, Fra Angelico, Gainsborough, Gauguin, Giotto, Goya, Hicks, Hogarth, Holbein, Homer, Hopper, Ingres, Leonardo da Vinci, Manet, Michelangelo, Munch, Picasso, Raphael, Renoir, Rockwell, Rousseau, Rubens, Sargent, Seurat, Titian, Uccello, Velazquez, Vermeer, Wood, Wyeth, van Eyck, van Gogh, and van der Goes.

We truly defy anyone to not be totally enthralled by this app. If you own an iPhone then you have to download this app, now. You can purchase it here for $2.99/£1.99. But the developer has also given us some extra codes to share with our readers. So if you’d like one just reply to this post and tell us what you love most about our review. We will select winners at random and send a code directly to your in box.