Art History Unit #2 Exam Study

17th-Century Baroque

A major European art movement characterized by emotional intensity, theatrical lighting, dynamic movement, and regional distinctions between Catholic devotional drama and Protestant realism.

Protestant Reformation

The 16th-century religious movement initiated by Martin Luther that rejected papal authority, resulting in widespread iconoclasm and altered artistic patronage across northern Europe.

Catholic Counter-Reformation

The Catholic Church's 16th- and 17th-century revival campaign that enlisted grand, emotionally stirring visual art to reinforce dogma and combat Protestant influence.

Tenebrism

A dramatic painting technique utilizing violent contrasts of light and dark, in which figures emerge from pitch-black, shadowy backgrounds.

Painterly Technique

A method of applying pigment that leaves visible, textured brushstrokes on the surface, contrasting with a smooth, blended, or linear finish.

Extreme Foreshortening

The dramatic optical compression of an object or figure along the viewer's direct line of sight, creating an illusion of intense spatial depth and projection.

Open Composition

An arrangement where elements, figures, and vectors extend beyond the frame, giving the impression that the scene continues indefinitely outside the canvas.

Protestant Revolt (1568–1648)

The Eighty Years' War in which the northern provinces of the Low Countries fought for and won independence from Catholic Spanish Habsburg rule.

Dutch Republic

The sovereign, trade-dominated 17th-century nation marked by Protestant culture, urban civic identity, and a flourishing middle-class art market.

Landscape (and Sub-Genres)

Depictions of natural scenery, divided into topographic (factual recording), ideal (harmonious and classical balance), and sublime (awe-inspiring and perilous nature).

Camera Obscura

An optical device with a small aperture or lens that projects an inverted external image onto an interior surface, aiding naturalistic rendering.

Genre Painting

Representations of scenes from everyday life, featuring ordinary people engaged in domestic chores, festive celebrations, or tavern activities.

Still Life

A painting focused on arrangements of inanimate items, including food, flowers, household vessels, musical instruments, and dead game.

Memento Mori

An artistic symbol or reminder of human mortality, traditionally depicted through skulls, hour-glasses, extinguished candles, or decaying fruit.

Vanitas Still Life

A specialized category of still life that illustrates the transience of earthly life, the emptiness of worldly wealth, and the inevitability of death.

Trompe L'œil

An illusionistic visual style designed to deceive the viewer into mistaking painted, two-dimensional surfaces for actual three-dimensional objects.

Nature / Scientific Still Life

A subgenre dedicated to the precise, descriptive observation and cataloging of botanical, zoological, and anatomical specimens.

Breakfast Pieces / Dinner Pieces

Dutch still lifes depicting morning meals (ontbijtjes) or lavish banquet tables (banketjes), reflecting middle-class prosperity and temperance.

Absolutism (Age of Absolutism)

A political doctrine and system in which a monarch exercises centralized, total governing power unrestricted by constitutional limits, epitomized by Louis XIV.

The French Royal Academy

The French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, founded in 1648 to codify visual standards, educate artists, and regulate royal patronage.

Academic Style

An aesthetic approach conforming to institutional rules, emphasizing draftsmanship, classical mythology, moralizing subjects, and invisible brushwork.

Classicism

An aesthetic philosophy drawing principles from ancient Greece and Rome, emphasizing rational order, symmetry, proportion, and idealized beauty.

History Painting

The most esteemed academic category, portraying grand narrative subjects from biblical events, classical mythology, or monumental historical occurrences.

Hierarchy of Genres

The academic classification system ranking subject prestige: history painting first, followed by portraiture, genre scenes, landscape, and still life.

Rococo

An 18th-century decorative and pictorial style celebrated for lighthearted themes, asymmetrical curves, pastel palettes, and scenes of courtly pleasure.

Fête Galante

An academic category created for Jean-Antoine Watteau portraying refined aristocrats leisurely socializing, courting, and relaxing in idyllic pastoral settings.

The Enlightenment

An 18th-century intellectual movement promoting rational inquiry, scientific empiricism, individual liberties, and religious tolerance over inherited tradition.

American and French Revolutions

Late 18th-century political upheavals inspired by Enlightenment ideals that overthrew colonial rule and the French monarchy, transforming political art.

The Paris Salon

The official, state-sponsored exhibition held by the French Academy in Paris, serving as the dominant platform for public scrutiny and professional success.

The Public Sphere

An emerging social realm outside state control where private individuals met in coffeehouses, salons, and print publications to discuss art, politics, and culture.

Neoclassicism

A late 18th-century movement that rejected Rococo whimsy in favor of stoic moral virtue, austere linear precision, and subjects from classical antiquity.

Prix de Rome

A prestigious scholarship established by the French Academy granting winners extended residency in Rome to study classical and Renaissance masterpieces.

Romanticism

A late 18th- and 19th-century movement emphasizing deep emotion, individual imagination, heroic rebellion, and the untamed power of the sublime.

Modernity (Baudelaire)

A concept popularized by Charles Baudelaire defining the modern urban experience as the transient, fleeting, and contingent nature of contemporary life.

Modernism

A broad artistic and cultural movement that broke with traditional academic representation to explore new materials, techniques, and abstract realities.

Avant-Garde

Innovative and radical artists who challenge conventional aesthetic boundaries, institutional authority, and bourgeois cultural expectations.

Realism

A mid-19th-century artistic movement led by Gustave Courbet that depicted unidealized, contemporary working-class existence with objective authenticity.

Daguerreotype

The first publicly announced photographic process, invented by Louis Daguerre, which captured detailed positive images on polished, silver-plated copper sheets.

Salon des Refusés

The 1863 exhibition sanctioned by Napoleon III to showcase artworks rejected by the official Salon, initiating a major challenge to academic hegemony.

Impressionism

A 19th-century movement marked by loose brushwork, bright unblended color, modern leisure subjects, and the capture of fleeting optical effects.

En Plein Air

The practice of painting outdoors in direct natural light rather than in a studio, crucial for Impressionist investigations of light and atmosphere.

Ukiyo-e

Japanese woodblock prints and paintings depicting the 'floating world' of urban pleasures, characterized by flat color planes, clear contours, and bold cropping.

• Artist: Johannes Vermeer

• Title: Officer and a Laughing Girl

• Date: c. 1655–1660

• Period / Movement: Dutch Baroque

• Medium / Details: Oil on canvas; genre scene featuring domestic interior and optical perspective

• Artist: Johannes Vermeer

• Title: The Milkmaid (Kitchen Maid Pouring Milk)

• Date: 1660

• Period / Movement: Dutch Baroque

• Medium / Details: Oil on canvas; domestic genre scene emphasizing everyday labor, natural light, and quiet dignity

• Artist: Johannes Vermeer

• Title: View of Delft

• Date: c. 1660–1661

• Period / Movement: Dutch Baroque

• Medium / Details: Oil on canvas; topographic cityscape showcasing naturalistic light, water reflections, and civic pride

• Artist: Jacob van Ruisdael

• Title: Bleaching Grounds near Haarlem from the Dunes at Overveen

• Date: c. 1670

• Period / Movement: Dutch Baroque

• Medium / Details: Oil on canvas; Dutch landscape (Haarlempje) featuring low horizons, expansive cloudscapes, and local linen industry

• Artist: Pieter Claesz

• Title: Vanitas Still Life

• Date: 1630

• Period / Movement: Dutch Baroque

• Medium / Details: Oil on panel; vanitas still life incorporating memento mori symbols (skull, timepiece, overturned glass) warning of transience

• Artist: Clara Peeters

• Title: Still Life with Cheeses, Almonds and Pretzels

• Date: 1615

• Period / Movement: Dutch / Flemish Baroque

• Medium / Details: Oil on panel; breakfast piece (ontbijtje) highlighting tactile food textures and reflective metalwork

• Artist: Willem Claesz. Heda

• Title: Still Life with a Gilded Beer Tankard

• Date: 1634

• Period / Movement: Dutch Baroque

• Medium / Details: Oil on canvas; monochrome banquet piece (banketje) exploring luxury, temperance, and reflective surfaces

• Artist: Rachel Ruysch

• Title: Still Life with Fruit, Flowers, and Insects

• Date: Early 18th century (c. 1711)

• Period / Movement: Dutch Baroque

• Medium / Details: Oil on canvas; botanical / scientific still life combining meticulous natural observation with subtle vanitas motifs

• Artist: Jan Brueghel the Elder

• Title: Small Bouquet of Flowers in a Copper Vase

• Date: c. 1600

• Period / Movement: Flemish Baroque

• Medium / Details: Oil on panel; detailed floral still life featuring rare botanical specimens rendered with scientific precision

• Artist: Adriaen van der Spelt & Frans van Mieris

• Title: Trompe l'œil Still Life with a Flower Garland and a Curtain

• Date: 1658

• Period / Movement: Dutch Baroque

• Medium / Details: Oil on panel; collaborative trompe l'œil painting (van der Spelt painted garland, van Mieris painted illusionistic silk curtain and rod)

• Artist: Hyacinthe Rigaud

• Title: Portrait of Louis XIV

• Date: 1701

• Period / Movement: French Baroque (Age of Absolutism)

• Medium / Details: Oil on canvas; monumental official state portrait celebrating divine-right monarchy and royal majesty

• Artist: Nicolas Poussin

• Title: The Death of Germanicus

• Date: 1628

• Period / Movement: French Classical Baroque

• Medium / Details: Oil on canvas; academic history painting illustrating stoic civic virtue and classical Roman tragedy

• Artist: Nicolas Poussin

• Title: Landscape with Funeral of Phocion

• Date: 1648

• Period / Movement: French Classical Baroque

• Medium / Details: Oil on canvas; ideal classical landscape framing a moralizing historical narrative of injustice and virtue

• Artist: Jean-Antoine Watteau

• Title: L'Indifférent

• Date: 1716

• Period / Movement: Rococo

• Medium / Details: Oil on panel (approx. 10 x 7.5 in.); intimate genre painting depicting an elegant, theatrically poised figure

• Artist: Jean-Antoine Watteau

• Title: A Pilgrimage to Cythera

• Date: 1717

• Period / Movement: Rococo

• Medium / Details: Oil on canvas (approx. 4 x 6 ft.); inaugural fête galante depicting aristocratic lovers in a mythical pastoral realm

• Artist: Jacques-Louis David

• Title: Oath of the Horatii

• Date: 1784

• Period / Movement: Neoclassicism

• Medium / Details: Oil on canvas; monumental history painting completed five years before the French Revolution preaching civic duty over personal ties

• Artist: Pietro Antonio Martini (print after)

• Title: The Paris Salon of 1785

• Date: 1785

• Period / Movement: 18th-Century Academic Art / The Enlightenment

• Medium / Details: Etching / print; portrays the public sphere and academic hierarchy inside the biennial Salon in the Louvre

• Artist: Jean-Honoré Fragonard

• Title: The Swing

• Date: 1767

• Period / Movement: Rococo

• Medium / Details: Oil on canvas; lighthearted scene of aristocratic leisure, illicit romance, and pastel botanical whimsy

• Artist: Jean-Siméon Chardin

• Title: The Morning Toilette

• Date: 1740

• Period / Movement: 18th-Century French Genre / Enlightenment

• Medium / Details: Oil on canvas; bourgeois domestic genre painting stressing quiet morality, restraint, and familial duty

• Artist: François Boucher

• Title: The Toilet of Venus

• Date: 1751

• Period / Movement: Rococo

• Medium / Details: Oil on canvas; sensuous mythological depiction commissioned by Madame de Pompadour embodying courtly indulgence

• Artist: Jean-Antoine Houdon

• Title: Portrait Sculpture of George Washington

• Date: 1788–1792

• Period / Movement: Neoclassicism

• Medium / Details: Carrara marble; civic portrait sculpture located in the Virginia State Capitol rotunda combining contemporary dress with classical fasces

• Artist: Francisco de Goya

• Title: The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

• Date: c. 1799–1800

• Period / Movement: Romanticism / Enlightenment Satire

• Medium / Details: Etching and aquatint (approx. 7.5 x 6 in.); plate #43 from the Los Caprichos series critiquing human folly and irrationality

• Artist: Francisco de Goya

• Title: The Third of May, 1808

• Date: 1814

• Period / Movement: Romanticism

• Medium / Details: Oil on canvas; raw political protest painting capturing the execution of Spanish civilians by Napoleonic troops

• Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner

• Title: The Slave Ship

• Date: 1840

• Period / Movement: Romanticism

• Medium / Details: Oil on canvas; sublime seascape uniting turbulent natural forces with an abolitionist exposé of human brutality

• Artist: Caspar David Friedrich

• Title: Monk by the Sea

• Date: 1809–1810

• Period / Movement: Romanticism

• Medium / Details: Oil on canvas; sublime, radically open landscape exploring solitary spiritual contemplation before vast nature

• Artist: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

• Title: The Grand Odalisque (Grande Odalisque)

• Date: 1814

• Period / Movement: Neoclassicism / Romantic Orientalism

• Medium / Details: Oil on canvas (approx. 3 x 5 ft.); exoticized female nude featuring elongated anatomical proportions and polished academic finish

• Artist: Eugène Delacroix

• Title: Death of Sardanapalus

• Date: 1827

• Period / Movement: Romanticism / Orientalism

• Medium / Details: Oil on canvas (approx. 12 x 16 ft.); tumultuous, color-saturated narrative depicting violent self-destruction and chaotic decadence

• Artist: Louis Daguerre

• Title: View of the Boulevard du Temple, Paris

• Date: 1838

• Period / Movement: Early Photography

• Medium / Details: Daguerreotype; landmark photograph representing one of the earliest visible photographic captures of a human being

• Artist: Gustave Courbet

• Title: A Burial at Ornans

• Date: 1849–1850

• Period / Movement: Realism

• Medium / Details: Oil on canvas (approx. 10 x 22 ft., Musée d'Orsay); monumental history-scale canvas recording an ordinary provincial working-class funeral

• Artist: Édouard Manet

• Title: Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (Luncheon on the Grass)

• Date: 1863

• Period / Movement: Realism / Early Modernism

• Medium / Details: Oil on canvas; showcased at the 1863 Salon des Refusés, subverting classical nude conventions in a contemporary Parisian park

• Artist: Édouard Manet

• Title: Olympia

• Date: 1863 (Exhibited 1865)

• Period / Movement: Realism / Early Modernism

• Medium / Details: Oil on canvas; debuted at the Salon of 1865, directly confronting traditional reclining Venus tropes with a modern sex worker

• Artist: Claude Monet

• Title: Impression, Sunrise

• Date: 1872

• Period / Movement: Impressionism

• Medium / Details: Oil on canvas (approx. 18.9 x 24.8 in.); harbor view at Le Havre that gave Impressionism its name through fleeting light and visible stroke

• Artist: Claude Monet

• Title: Boulevard des Capucines

• Date: 1873–1874

• Period / Movement: Impressionism

• Medium / Details: Oil on canvas; urban streetscape depicting bustling Parisian pedestrian flow and atmospheric modernity from an elevated viewpoint

• Artist: Claude Monet

• Title: Gare Saint-Lazare (St.-Lazare Train Station)

• Date: 1877

• Period / Movement: Impressionism

• Medium / Details: Oil on canvas (approx. 21 x 29 in.); en plein air study of industrial modernity, locomotive steam, and iron architecture

• Artist: Edgar Degas

• Title: Place de la Concorde (Count Lepic and His Daughters)

• Date: 1875

• Period / Movement: Impressionism

• Medium / Details: Oil on canvas; modern urban composition using eccentric cropping and negative space inspired by photography and Japanese prints

• Artist: Mary Cassatt

• Title: In the Loge

• Date: 1878

• Period / Movement: Impressionism

• Medium / Details: Oil on canvas; opera house scene representing an autonomous modern woman as an active spectator rather than a passive object