Art Appreciation Quiz - Chapters 1-4

Find out what subject dominated the art of the Paleolithic era

Far more common than Paleolithic representations of humans are sculptures and paintings of animals

• pg. 17

Know what era agriculture began in

Neolithic Age

• pg. 20

Discover which civilization invented writing in the 4th millennium BC

Sumer, the Sumerians

• pg. 15

Know who was the first recorded artist's name and where they were from

Imhotep, master builder for King Djoser, from Memphis, Egypt

• pg. 32

Be familiar with the Egyptian face carved into a massive stone cliff

Ramses II

• pg. 38

Be familiar with facts about the Palace, Knossos 1700-1370 BCE

The palace was complex in elevation as well as plan. It had at least three stories on all sides of the court. Minoan columns taper from top to bottom, the opposite of Egyptian and Greek columns.

Frescoes decorated the palace walls. The Minoan men and women have stylized bodies with narrow waists. The skin color varies with gender, a common convention in ancient paintings.

• pg. 49

Be able to identify when the human figure returned to Greek art

The formative period/the Geometric age

• pg. 54

Be familiar with those who wrote plays during the fifth century and what that age was called

Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides wrote plays during the Classical/Golden age

• pg. 62-63, 81

Be knowledgeable about the sculpture Aphrodite of Knidos

This first nude statue of a Greek goddess caused a sensation. But Praxiteles was also famous for his ability to transform marble into soft and radiant flesh. His Aphrodite had “dewy eyes.”

• pg. 73

Be familiar with what the Hellenistic artists enjoyed depicting

Hellenistic artists delighted in depicting violent movement and unbridled emotion.

• pg. 81

Know basic facts about the construction methods of the Etruscans

The Etruscans build wood and mud-brick temples with column and stairs only on the front and with statues on the roof.

At Cerveteri, the Etruscans bury their dead beneath earthen tumuli in tombs resembling houses. Tarquinian tombs feature fresco paintings.

Because of the materials that Etruscan builders employed, usually only the foundations of their temples have survived.

• pg. 84-85

Discover everything you can about the first use of concrete as a building material

The Roman invention of concrete construction began an architectural revolution still felt today.

Pompeii’s amphitheater is the oldest known and an early example of Roman concrete technology.

• pg. 84, 92

Be familiar with a natural disaster that preserved evidence of antiquity and what this evidence is

One of the best preserved houses at Pompeii is the House of the Vettii.

• pg. 90-94

Be familiar with the Pantheon

A temple of all the gods, revealing the full potential of concrete

• pg. 105-107

Identify the Roman leader who ended the persecution of Christians and moved the capital from Rome to Constantinople in 330 AD

Constantine

• pg. 112

Be familiar with the earliest Christian art that has survived

Catacombs paintings and sarcophagi

• pg. 118

Know about the Roman transition to Christianity as the official religion

In 325, at the Council of Nicaea, Christianity became the de facto official religion of the Roman Empire.

• pg. 112

Identify a Byzantine church that had mosaics with weightless hovering frontal figures

San Vitale’s mosaics reveal the new Byzantine aesthetic. Justinian is foremost among the weightless and speechless frontal figures hovering before the viewer, their positions in space uncertain.

pg. 131

Identify a Byzantine leader who restored churches and famously loved the arts

Justinian

• pg. 126-127

Be familiar with the purpose of a catacomb

The Christian community tunneled the catacombs out of the tufa bedrock, much as the Etruscans excavated their tomb chambers beneath earthen tumuli

• pg. 118-119