VISUAL ART STUDY GUIDE

harmony

in visual art, the relationship of like elements such as colors and repeated patterns

pathos

the “suffering” aspect of drama usually associated with the evocation of pity

Idealistic

idealist = perfect individual, the realm of the Gods, not of this world, art and architecture represent the divine world, not reality, strive for perfection and harmony (statues without facial expressions and not earthly flaws), belief in the Gods and Creation from the Gods for the Gods

aesthetics

relating to the appreciation of beauty or good taste or having a heightened sensitivity to beauty: a philosophy of what is artistically valid or beautiful

archaic

a style of art and architecture dating to ancient, pre-classical Greece, typified by the DORIC ORDER, post-and-lintel structure, geometric designs (especially in pottery), free standing statues with stiff frontal poses (examples: KOUROS and KORE)

Classical

a style of art and architecture dating to mid-fifth century BCE, Athens, Greece or ancient Rome: art that emphasizes simplicity, harmony, restraint, proportion, and reason

hellenisitc

what to look for: mixing of cultures, Greeks including elements that would never have before (ex: facial expressions, portraiture), movement, still Greek: idealization + perfect human forms; a style dating back to the 2nd century BCE that encompassed a diversity of approaches reflecting an increasing interest in the differences between individual humans and characterized by emotion, drama, absolute facial expression, and interaction of sculptural forms with the surrounding space

doric

in architecture, the oldest and simplest of the three Greek architectural orders (with IONIC and Corinthian). It is characterized by heavy columns with plain, saucer-shaped capitals and no base.

ionic

in architecture, one of three orders of Greek architecture characterized by two opposed volutes (a spiral, scroll-like ornamental feature) in the capital (the topmost section of a column or pillar). More thin and delicate.

corinthian

One of three ancient Greek architectural orders. The most ornate order that is characterized by slender fluted columns with an ornate, bell shaped capital decorated with acanthus leaves.

Alexander the Great

reigned for 10 years, conquered huge territories, mixed cultures, died at age 32 with no heir, defeated Darius II, most commonly known as Alexander the Great, was king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip II to the throne in 336 BC at the age of 20, and spent most of his reign conducting a lengthy military campaign throughout Asia and Egypt. By the age of 30, he had created one of the largest empires in history, stretching from Greece to northwestern India . He was undefeated in battle and is widely considered to be one of history's greatest and most successful military commanders.

How is Greek art a reflection of ancient Greek society?

• It reflected their vision for an idealistic society created by the gods, using expressionless, perfectly styled faces and unnaturally stiff posing in sculptures (Humans created in image of gods = no earthly flaws). Art and architecture represented the divine world and not reality.

• Prometheus created man after all other animals

• They wanted their art + architecture to honor Gods, Goddesses, and Heroes that were relevant at the time and were important to them

• Stylization: almond eyes, hair very stylized, over simplified body, stiff and symmetrical, no facial expressions

What consistent concerns of Greek society are evident in the visual art and theatre?

• Greek Drama reflected the flaws and values of Greek society.

• Believed their actions and fate were predestined by the gods = you can’t change your fate

• Internalized positive and negative messages them and incorporated them

• Exposed society’s flaws and allowed people to learn from them

Engaged Columns

a column, often decorative, which is part of, and projects from, a wall surface

Greek v. Roman

Rome defeated Greece in a battle of Corinth, even though Rome won, everything that was Greek became Roman, allowing the Greeks to defeat the Romans aesthetically by erasing their culture. The Greeks were rigid in only taking inspiration and ideas from themselves, while Romans accepted ideas from many other places, believing their people originated all around the world. Greek architecture consists more of monuments meant to be seen but not entered, while Romans had more temples with entrances, with Greek styling but more functional in being able to go inside, including engaged columns and a portico or arch entrance. In their art, Roman art was much more realistic and imperfect rather than the Greeks' belief in idealism.

Engineering

the application of mathematics, scientific principles, and practical knowledge to design, build, and optimize solutions for real-world problems. It involves creating structures, machines, and systems while balancing practical constraints like safety, budget, and materials

arch

in architecture, a structural form taking a curved shape

Dome

in architecture, a circular vaulted roof

barrel vault

in architecture, a series of arches placed back to back to enclose space

Groin vault

in architecture, a ceiling formation created by the intersection of two tunnel or barrel vaults.

cement

the "glue" used in construction. It is a fine powder made from burned minerals like limestone and clay. When you mix this powder with water, it acts as a binder that hardens and holds other materials together

victory arch

consists of two massive piers connected by an arch, typically crowned with a flat entablature or attic on which a statue might be mounted or which bears commemorative inscriptions. The main structure is often decorated with carvings, sculpted reliefs, and dedications

Advances in Roman engineering

inventing durable Roman concrete (opus caementicium), perfecting arch and vault construction, building a vast network of 50,000 miles of paved roads, and establishing sophisticated aqueducts and hypocaust central heating systems

How is Roman art a reflection of ancient Roman society?

• It reflects much of ancient Greek art as Roman society adopted much of what Greek society used to be. It took inspiration and ideas from many places, seeing influences from other places just as Romans took inspiration from other people. It is much more functional as well.

What differences do you see between Roman and Greek art?

• Roman art is more realistic-looking, while Greek art is more idealistic and aims for perfection. The Romans basically stole everything from the Greeks after they conquered them, so they tried to reflect what the Greeks made but with a more realistic twist.

What inventions, engineering and perfections made the Roman architecture possible?

• Cement, arches, vaults, domes, pulley (crane-like), bricks, geometry, mathematical equations, keystones (middle part of arches that deal with pressure), plumbing/aqueducts, scaffolding, flying buttresses

Romanesque

a style in visual art and architecture from the eleventh through early twelfth centuries in Europe characterized rounded arches on doorways and windows. It is massive, static, and comparatively lightless. In sculpture, it was fairly diverse, typically attached to Romanesque buildings, stone, and monumental.

Gothic

In architecture, painting, and sculpture, a medieval style based on a pointed-arch structure and characterized by simplicity, verticality, elegance, and lightness,

Early Renaissance

was a transformative cultural movement centered in Florence, Italy, that bridged medieval traditions and the High Renaissance. Funded by wealthy patrons like the Medici family, this period sparked a "rebirth" of classical Greek and Roman ideals, shifting European thought toward humanism—a philosophy celebrating human reason and individual potential over strict religious devotion. In the arts, creators rejected flat, symbolic medieval styles in favor of striking realism, mastering human anatomy and introducing revolutionary techniques like Masaccio’s chiaroscuro and Filippo Brunelleschi’s mathematical linear perspective to create the illusion of three-dimensional depth. Through the pioneering works of artists like Donatello and Sandro Botticelli, the Early Renaissance permanently reshaped Western art and intellect, laying the essential structural and philosophical foundations for future masters like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo

What other period in art did we see similar conventions such as, scale of

individuals and stylization?

Chiaroscuro

the technique of using light and shade to develop a three-dimensional form.

Perspective

In two-dimensional art, the representation of distance and three-dimensionality on a two-dimensional surface

Sfumato

a smoky or hazy quality in a painting, with particular reference to Leonardo da Vinci’s work

Masaccio

was a Florentine artist who is regarded as the first great Italian painter of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaissance. According to Vasari, Masaccio was the best painter of his generation because of his skill at imitating nature, recreating lifelike figures and movements as well as a convincing sense of three-dimensionality. He employed nudes and foreshortening in his figures. This had seldom been done before him.

Botticelli

was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. Botticelli's posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century, when he was rediscovered by the Pre-Raphaelites who stimulated a reappraisal of his work. Since then, his paintings have been seen to represent the linear grace of late Italian Gothic and some Early Renaissance painting, even though they date from the latter half of the Italian Renaissance period.

Donatello

was an Italian sculptor of the Renaissance period. Born in Florence, he studied classical sculpture and used his knowledge to develop an Early Renaissance style of sculpture. He spent time in other cities, where he worked on commissions and taught others; his periods in Rome, Padua, and Siena introduced to other parts of Italy the techniques he had developed in the course of a long and productive career. His David was the first freestanding nude male sculpture since antiquity; like much of his work, it was commissioned by the Medici family.

Brunelleschi

was an Italian architect, designer, goldsmith, and sculptor. He is considered to be a founding father of Renaissance architecture. He is recognized as the first modern engineer, planner, and sole construction supervisor. In 1421, Brunelleschi became the first person to receive a patent in the Western world. He is most famous for designing the dome of the Florence Cathedral, and for the mathematical technique of linear perspective in art which governed pictorial depictions of space until the late 19th century and influenced the rise of modern science. His accomplishments also include other architectural works, sculpture, mathematics, engineering, and ship design. Most surviving works can be found in Florence.

Michelangelo

was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. He was born in the Republic of Florence but was mostly active in Rome from his 30s onwards. His work was inspired by models from classical antiquity and had a lasting influence on Western art. Michelangelo's creative abilities and mastery in a range of artistic arenas define him as an archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and elder contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci. Given the sheer volume of surviving correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences, Michelangelo is one of the best-documented artists of the 16th century. He was lauded by contemporary biographers as the most accomplished artist of his era

Raphael

was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Together with Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period.

Baroque

a diverse artistic style taking place from the late sixteenth to early eighteenth century marked typically by complexity, elaborate form, and appeal to the emotions

Naturalism

a style dating to the late nineteenth century that rests on accurate, non-emotional recreation of elements from real life. It is related to realism.

Rococo

an eighteenth century style in architecture and visual art, developed in France from the BAROQUE and characterized by elaborate and profuse ornamentation, often in the form of shells, scrolls, and the like. In architecture it manifested itself in interior design and furniture. In painting and sculpting, a decorous style exhibiting intimate grace, charm, and delicate superficiality.

Neo-classical

adherence to or practice of the ideals and characteristics of classical art, literature, and music. In painting, it emerged in the eighteenth century. The Neoclassical for theatre, also known as the late Baroque, was inspired by Greek and Roman dramas, preferring realism and logical plots over fantasy. Along with that, characters were meant to teach moral lessons to their audiences. It was very focused on reason and reality rather than fiction. The neoclassical for art, much like the neoclassical for theatre, was also inspired by Roman and Greek art ideals. Its art focused on reason, simplicity, and order. Figures in these art pieces often looked carefully composed, and the use of clear lines and balanced compositions emphasize its style. Art from this time often depicts subjects that are historical, mythological, and patriotic, such as in “The Oath of Horatii” by Jacques-Louis David, a neoclassical painter. This art style was developed as a counterpoint to the Rococo, falling back on these ideals.

Absolutism

is a system where power, authority, or truth is absolute, centralized, and entirely unrestricted by outside forces. Politically, it describes absolute monarchies or dictatorships—like King Louis XIV's reign in 17th-century France—where a single ruler holds supreme sovereignty, often justified by the "divine right of kings." Philosophically, it refers to moral absolutism, the belief that certain actions are intrinsically right or wrong regardless of context, culture, or consequences.

Caravaggio

was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life. During the final four years of his life, he moved between Naples, Malta, and Sicily. His paintings have been characterized by art critics as combining a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, which had a formative influence on Baroque painting

Bernini

was an Italian sculptor, architect, painter and city planner. Bernini's creative abilities and mastery in a range of artistic arenas define him as a uomo universale or Renaissance man. While a major figure in the world of architecture, he was more prominently the leading sculptor of his age, credited with creating the Baroque style of sculpture.

Rubens

was a Flemish artist and diplomat. He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque tradition. Rubens's highly charged compositions reference erudite aspects of classical and Christian history. His unique and immensely popular Baroque style emphasised movement, colour, and sensuality, which followed the immediate, dramatic artistic style promoted in the Counter-Reformation. Rubens was a painter producing altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. He was also a prolific designer of cartoons for the Flemish tapestry workshops and of frontispieces for the publishers in Antwerp.

Louis XIV

was King of France from 14 May 1643 until his death in 1715. He is a symbol of the Age of Absolutism in Europe for styling himself as "The Sun King" (Le Roi Soleil), which portrayed him as supreme leader.[1] He presided over a great expansion of the French colonial empire and a patronage of arts in his court at the Palace of Versailles that defined the Baroque style of French architecture. His reign of 72 years and 110 days remains the longest of any sovereign monarch in history.

David

was, originally, leader of the Tribe of Judah who became the second king of the United Kingdom of Israel, according to the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament, story of david killing goliath with a sling shot, statues

Fragonard

was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific artists active in the last decades of the Ancien Régime, Fragonard produced more than 550 paintings (not counting drawings and etchings), of which only five are dated. Among his most popular works are genre paintings conveying an atmosphere of intimacy and veiled eroticism.

Watteau

was a French painter and draughtsman whose brief career spurred the revival of interest in colour and movement, as seen in the tradition of Correggio and Rubens. He revitalized the waning Baroque style, shifting it to the less severe, more naturalistic, less formally classical, Rococo. Watteau is credited with inventing the genre of fêtes galantes, scenes of bucolic and idyllic charm, suffused with a theatrical air. Some of his best known subjects were drawn from the world of Italian comedy and ballet.

Delacroix

was a French Romantic artist who was regarded as the leader of the French Romantic school. In contrast to the Neoclassical perfectionism of his chief rival Ingres, Delacroix took for his inspiration the art of Rubens and painters of the Venetian Renaissance, with an attendant emphasis on colour and movement rather than clarity of outline and carefully modelled form. Dramatic and romantic content characterized the central themes of his maturity, and led him not to the classical models of Greek and Roman art, but to travel in North Africa in search of the exotic. Friend and spiritual heir to Théodore Géricault, Delacroix was also inspired by Lord Byron, with whom he shared a strong identification with the "forces of the sublime" of nature in often violent action

Ingres

was a French Neoclassical painter. Ingres was profoundly influenced by past artistic traditions and aspired to become the guardian of academic orthodoxy against the ascendant Romantic style. Although he considered himself a painter of history in the tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David, it is his portraits, both painted and drawn, that are recognized as his greatest legacy. His expressive distortions of form and space made him an important precursor of modern art, influencing Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and other modernists.

Courbet

was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and the Romanticism of the previous generation of visual artists. His independence set an example that was important to later artists, such as the Impressionists and the Cubists. Courbet occupies an important place in 19th-century French painting as an innovator and as an artist willing to make bold social statements through his work

Manet

He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism. Born into an upper-class household with strong political connections, Manet rejected the naval career originally envisioned for him; he became engrossed in the world of painting. His early masterworks, The Luncheon on the Grass (French: Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe) and Olympia, premiering in 1863 and '65, respectively, caused great controversy with both critics and the Academy of Fine Arts, but soon were praised by progressive artists as the breakthrough acts to the new style, Impressionism. These works, along with others, are considered watershed paintings that mark the start of modern art. The last 20 years of Manet's life saw him form bonds with other great artists of the time; he developed his own simple and direct style that would be heralded as innovative and serve as a major influence for future painters.