Andalusia PAU History of Art flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Ziggurat

Mesopotamian stepped temple platform of mud brick, with a shrine on the summit and stairways for ritual access; Ur-Nammu's example has buttressed walls and baked-brick facing.

Kouros

Archaic Greek nude male standing statue, frontal and symmetrical with one leg advanced, fists clenched, and the Archaic smile; functions as votive or funerary marker.

Contrapposto

Weight-shift pose in which the engaged leg supports the body while the free leg bends, producing tilted hips and shoulders; introduced in Greek Severe style and revived in the Renaissance.

Opus caementicium

Roman mortar concrete of lime, water, and aggregate, laid with rubble; it enabled vaults, domes, and thick masses without cut-stone bonding, as in the Pantheon.

Pendentive

Curved triangular vaulting member that transitions from a square bay to a circular dome base; Byzantine Hagia Sophia rests its dome on four pendentives.

Flying buttress

Exterior arched strut carrying the thrust of a high vault across to a pier, freeing the wall for large clerestory windows; characteristic of Gothic churches such as Chartres.

Tympanum

Semicircular area above a portal lintel, enclosed by arches; Romanesque and Gothic examples carry didactic relief sculpture, often the Last Judgment, arranged by hierarchical scale.

Mudejar

Iberian style applying Islamic techniques and ornament - brick, horseshoe arches, azulejo tiles, artesonado ceilings - within Christian architecture, as at Seville's Alcázar.

Linear perspective

System codified by Alberti in 1435 in which parallel lines converge at a vanishing point on the horizon, producing measurable illusion of depth on a flat surface.

Sfumato

Leonardo's technique of extremely subtle tonal transitions that soften contours and model form as if in smoke, removing hard outlines; visible in the Mona Lisa.

Figura serpentinata

Serpentine, twisting pose in which the body spirals around its axis; a Mannerist hallmark derived from Michelangelo and codified by later theorists as graceful movement.

Tenebrism

Extreme chiaroscuro in which figures emerge from near-total darkness under a single raking light; associated with Caravaggio and his followers across Europe.

Quadratura

Illusionistic ceiling painting of architectural framework in steep perspective, opening the ceiling into fictive sky; used by Pozzo and Gaulli in Baroque Rome.

Estípite

Tapered, inverted-pyramid column shaft used in Spanish Baroque retables; its stacked geometric sections support dense ornament in Churrigueresque ensembles.

Las Meninas

Velázquez's 1656 court painting staging the artist at his easel, the infanta with maids, and mirror reflections of the king and queen, questioning pictorial space and viewing.

Ataurique

Islamic arabesque ornament of stylized, interlocking vegetal scrolls carved in stucco or stone; widespread in Caliphal, Almohad, and Nasrid decoration.

Muqarnas

Three-dimensional Islamic vaulting of stacked, cascading niche cells, often in plaster or wood; used for domes, portals, and cornices in Al-Andalus and North Africa.

Iconography

Study identifying subject matter through attributes, texts, and conventions; Panofsky separates pre-iconographic description, iconographic identification, and iconological interpretation of cultural meaning.

Fresco

Painting with pigment in water on wet lime plaster, so the image sets into the wall as the plaster carbonates; durable but requires rapid work in giornate sections.

Impasto

Thick application of paint that stands in relief from the surface, retaining brush or palette-knife marks; used expressively by Rembrandt, Van Gogh, and Goya.

Oath of the Horatii

David's 1784 Neoclassical canvas of three brothers swearing loyalty, painted with frieze-like composition, shallow space, austere color, and Roman republican moral subject.

Pointillism

Seurat's method of building form from small, regular dots of unmixed color intended to blend optically at a distance; grounded in color theory and called divisionism.

Raft of the Medusa

Géricault's 1819 Romantic painting of a contemporary shipwreck, composed as a double pyramid of despair and hope, based on research and sketches of survivors.

Analytic Cubism

Picasso and Braque's phase around 1907–1912 fragmenting objects into facets seen from multiple viewpoints, with a narrow ochre and gray palette and dissolved contours.

Readymade

Ordinary manufactured object selected and presented as art by Duchamp, such as a urinal titled Fountain, challenging authorship, craft, and institutional definitions of art.

Automatism

Surrealist technique of suppressing conscious control to draw or write spontaneously; Masson's fluid lines and Miró's forms derive from it, opposed to veristic dream imagery.

Hagia Sophia

Justinian's sixth-century Constantinople church, combining a central dome on pendentives with a basilical plan; its 40-window dome and marble revetment define Byzantine architecture.

Pantheon

Hadrianic Roman temple with a hemispherical coffered dome, 43.3 m diameter, open oculus, and cylindrical drum; its interior diameter equals its height.

El Greco

Cretan-born painter active in Toledo, combining Byzantine iconography with Mannerist elongation, acidic color, and dramatic light, as in the Burial of the Count of Orgaz.

Las Meninas mirror

The mirror at the rear of Velázquez's Las Meninas reflects the king and queen, implying they occupy the viewer's position and complicating the painting's spatial logic.

Sfumato versus chiaroscuro

Sfumato softens contours through gradual tonal transitions within form; chiaroscuro is strong contrast of light and dark that models volume or creates drama; tenebrism is its extreme.

Salon des Refusés

1863 Paris exhibition of works rejected by the official Salon jury, including Manet's Déjeuner sur l'herbe; it signaled the breakdown of academic control over exhibition.