Art History Terminology and Concepts

Medium

Material used to make an artwork, such as oil on canvas, marble, or ink on paper.

Sculpture in the round

Freestanding sculpture that can be viewed from multiple sides.

Relief sculpture

Sculpted forms project from a background surface.

Tenebrism

Dramatic contrast of intense light and deep darkness. Example: Caravaggio's Calling of Saint Matthew.

Chiaroscuro

Use of light and shadow to create a sense of three-dimensional volume.

Naturalism

Representation of people or things in a lifelike manner.

Idealization

Representation that perfects or improves on ordinary appearances.

Foreshortening

Visually compressing a form to make it appear to extend toward or away from the viewer.

Trompe l'œil

"Trick of the eye": an illusion that makes painted forms appear real.

Di sotto in su

"From below upward": a viewpoint designed to look as though the viewer is looking up.

Quadratura

Illusionistic painted architecture that seems to extend a real architectural space.

Etching

Printmaking method: acid bites lines into a metal plate, which is inked and printed.

Calligraphy

Expressive or beautiful handwriting; often part of Chinese scroll painting.

Hierarchical scale

Showing an important figure larger than others to communicate status.

Patron

A person or institution that commissions, purchases, or supports art.

Allegory

A person, object, or story stands for an abstract idea. Liberty personifies freedom in Delacroix.

Genre painting

A painting depicting ordinary life, such as domestic activities or social scenes.

Moral genre painting

An everyday scene used to teach a moral lesson or criticize conduct.

Satire

Criticism through irony, humor, or exaggeration. Hogarth satirized marriage for money.

Still life

An arrangement of inanimate subjects, such as flowers, food, or vessels.

Vanitas

A reminder that life, beauty, and material possessions are temporary; wilting flowers can symbolize this.

History painting

A painting of an important historical, biblical, mythological, or literary subject; highly ranked by academies.

Didactic

Intended to teach a lesson, as in David's Oath of the Horatii.

Propaganda

Images or messages intended to shape public opinion; Gros presents Napoleon as a brave leader.

Fête galante

A scene of elegantly dressed people enjoying aristocratic leisure or courtship, often outdoors; Watteau.

Salon

Depending on context: a social/intellectual gathering, a reception room, or an academy art exhibition.

Vedute

Detailed views of recognizable cities or locations, such as Canaletto's views of Venice.

Grand Tour

Educational journey through Europe, especially Italy, undertaken mainly by wealthy travelers to see art and antiquity.

Orientalism

Western representations of Eastern cultures that can exoticize or stereotype them and project Western fantasies.

Chinoiserie

European decorative style inspired by European interpretations of Chinese and other East Asian art.

Porcelain

Refined, hard ceramic fired at high temperatures; often white and sometimes translucent.

Literati painting

Painting associated with educated scholar-artists, emphasizing personal expression, brushwork, poetry, and nature.

Court / professional painting

Work by trained artists for patrons such as an emperor; often detailed and conveys an official message.

Confucianism

Tradition emphasizing ethical behavior, education, social harmony, and duties within relationships.

Daoism / Taoism

Tradition emphasizing harmony with the Dao, or the Way, and alignment with the natural world.

Seal stamp

Mark that can identify an artist, owner, collector, or another person associated with a work.

Pueblo

Spanish for village; also used for certain Indigenous communities and their settlements in the Southwest.

Tipi

Portable conical dwelling associated with a number of Great Plains Indigenous peoples.

Wampum

Shell beads, often arranged in belts, used for purposes including recording and communicating agreements.

Readymade / found object

An existing manufactured or found object used as or incorporated into an artwork.

Appropriation

Using an existing image, object, or cultural form; meaning and ethics depend on the context.

Manifest Destiny

19th-century belief that the United States was destined to expand across North America, used to justify expansion and dispossession.

The sublime

Awe, sometimes mixed with fear, in response to something vast or powerful, such as a storm.

Arabesque

A curving, often floral or foliage-like decorative pattern, especially prominent in Rococo interiors.

Baldacchino

A canopy, often marking an important place such as an altar; Bernini designed one for St. Peter's.

Camera obscura

A dark chamber or device that projects an image through a small opening or lens; a tool for observation.

Counter-Reformation

Catholic response to the Protestant Reformation; religious art and architecture encouraged devotion and communicated Church authority.

Abstraction

Simplifying or transforming forms away from a strictly lifelike representation; it can carry symbolic or design meaning.

Portico / porticos

A roofed entrance or walkway supported by columns. At St. Peter's, the curved colonnades frame the piazza and suggest the welcoming arms of the Church.

Colonnade

A row of columns supporting a roof or entablature; Bernini's curved colonnades surround St. Peter's piazza.

Piazza

An Italian public square or open plaza. Bernini designed the piazza before St. Peter's Basilica.

Facade

The front or principal exterior face of a building. Maderno added the facade of St. Peter's.

Basilica

A church type with a longitudinal plan, usually a central nave and side aisles; also an ecclesiastical title. Adding a facade alone does not make a church a basilica.

Barberini

Powerful Roman family of Pope Urban VIII. Its three-bee emblem appears in commissioned works to associate the family with power and patronage.

Pope Urban VIII

Barberini pope and major patron of Bernini. Associate him with St. Peter's Baldacchino and Barberini bee imagery.

King Philip IV

Spanish king whose court painter was Velázquez. Philip and Queen Mariana are generally identified in the mirror of Las Meninas.

Louis XIV / Sun King

French absolute monarch associated with Versailles and the Royal Academy. Art, ceremony and imagery of Apollo helped express royal power.

Absolute monarchy

Government in which a monarch claims supreme authority. Louis XIV used art and architecture to visualize the authority of his rule.

Divine right

Belief that a monarch's authority comes from God, supporting claims that subjects should not challenge the ruler.

Fleur-de-lis

Stylized lily associated with French royalty; appears in royal imagery and decoration.

Guild

A professional association regulating a craft and its training. The notes contrast guild training with the later academy system.

Hôtel / hôtels

In this context, an elegant private urban mansion or townhouse in Paris, not a modern commercial hotel.

Femmes savants / femmes savantes

Learned women associated with hosting intellectual salons; aristocratic women shaped social and artistic taste through these gatherings.

Louis XV / regency

Louis XIV's successor. A regent governed while Louis XV was a child after 1715; aristocratic life shifted toward Parisian townhouses, a setting for Rococo.

Open composition

An arrangement that seems to continue beyond the frame or invites the viewer into the action; used to increase involvement in Baroque art.

Diagonal composition

Slanting lines or arrangements create motion and tension; a common Baroque device.

Fresco

Painting with pigments on wet lime plaster so the image becomes part of the plaster as it dries. Associate with monumental ceiling decoration.

Stucco

Plaster-like material molded into sculptural or architectural ornament; Gaulli's ceiling combines painted imagery and stucco figures.

Kiln

An oven or furnace used to fire clay or ceramic objects at high temperatures.

Underglaze / cobalt blue

Decoration applied before a transparent glaze and firing. Cobalt produces the blue designs on Ming porcelain examples.

Ink painting

Painting with brush and water-based ink, sometimes with color, on surfaces such as paper or silk.

Hanging scroll

A vertically oriented scroll intended to be hung for viewing; differs from a handscroll unrolled horizontally.

Handscroll

A horizontal scroll viewed gradually by unrolling portions, generally from right to left; not meant to be seen all at once like a wall painting.

Album leaf

An individual page in an album of paintings or calligraphy. Shen Zhou's Poet on a Mountaintop is an album leaf.

Buddhism

Religious tradition originating in India, concerned with suffering, its causes and liberation. The slides state it reached China during the Han dynasty.

Yuan dynasty

1279-1368 in the course timeline; a dynasty established under Mongol rule. Associate with Kublai Khan and works by Wu Zhen and Zhao Mengfu.

Mongols

People whose rulers established the Yuan dynasty in China. Kublai Khan was a grandson of Genghis Khan.

Kublai Khan

Mongol ruler, grandson of Genghis Khan, associated with the Yuan dynasty and Beijing. The slides give his rule as 1271-1294.

Marco Polo

Venetian traveler whose accounts of Asia helped stimulate European interest in travel and China; associated in the course with the Yuan period.

Qing dynasty

1644-1911 in the course timeline; Manchu dynasty following the Ming. Associate with the Qianlong emperor and Castiglione's court paintings.

Manchus

People from Manchuria who established the Qing dynasty; distinguish them from the Mongol rulers of the Yuan.

Giuseppe Castiglione / Lang Shining

Italian Jesuit missionary and artist at the Qing court. Combined Chinese subjects and materials with European techniques of naturalism, modeling and perspective.

Qianlong emperor

Qing emperor depicted in ceremonial armor on horseback by Castiglione; associate with imperial patronage, authority and cross-cultural artistic exchange.

Auspicious

Suggesting or wishing for good fortune. Symbolic objects in a court painting can wish an emperor long life or prosperity.

Longevity symbolism

Images can wish for long life: the notes connect an old pine and mushrooms in Castiglione's Auspicious Objects with longevity.

Bamboo and rock symbolism

The notes associate bamboo with resilience and rock with stability; landscape elements can express human character, not simply record appearances.

Atmospheric perspective

Creating depth by making distant forms less distinct, lighter or cooler in appearance; discussed with European influence on Chinese court painting.

Linear perspective

A geometric system in which receding parallel lines appear to converge toward vanishing points, creating an illusion of depth.

Empiricism

Knowledge developed through observation and experience. Connect to experiments, direct study and the Grand Tour.

Deductive reasoning

Reasoning from general principles to a particular conclusion. The slides associate deductive logic with Descartes.

Scientific method

Systematic investigation using observation, questions, testing and evidence; supports the era's emphasis on reason and inquiry.

Heliocentric model

A model with the Sun at the center of the planetary system; the course associates it with Copernicus and Kepler.

Galileo

Scientist associated in the slides with the telescope and observation of the heavens.

Leeuwenhoek

Microscopist associated in the slides with the microscope and observation of very small forms of life.

Copernicus and Kepler

Scientists associated with the heliocentric model; Kepler formulated laws describing planetary motion.

René Descartes

Philosopher associated here with deductive reasoning and logic.

Francis Bacon

Thinker associated here with controlled experiments and empiricism: learning through observation and evidence.

Isaac Newton

Scientist associated with laws of motion and gravity, optics and calculus; an example of the era's confidence in rational investigation.

John Locke

Thinker associated with reason, natural rights to life, liberty and property, and government's responsibility to protect rights.

Voltaire

Enlightenment thinker associated in the slides with freedom of speech, religious tolerance and criticism of abuses of authority.