PAU Artistic Foundations II (Aragón) key terms

Archaic Greek standing nude male statue, usually marble, with frontal pose, left foot forward and the archaic smile; used as votive offering or grave marker between the 7th and 6th centuries BC.

Pose in which weight rests on one leg, so hips and shoulders tilt in opposite directions and the body curves in an S; introduced in classical Greek sculpture and revived in the Renaissance.

System of proportions for the ideal male nude set out by the Greek sculptor Polykleitos in his treatise and embodied in the Doryphoros, based on measurable ratios between head, torso and limbs.

Fixed, slightly unnatural grin carved on faces of Greek Archaic sculpture, used as a convention of liveliness rather than a real expression; disappears when Severe and Classical styles favour serene faces.

Three Greek systems of column, capital and entablature - Doric, Ionic and Corinthian - defined by proportions and ornament; Rome added the Tuscan and composite variants.

Horizontal band carried by columns, made of architrave, frieze and cornice; its proportions and decoration differ between the Doric, Ionic and Corinthian orders.

Triangular gable formed by the sloping roof of a Greek temple, often filled with sculpture; in Roman and later architecture the triangle may be purely decorative above a portico.

Temple of Athena on the Athenian Acropolis (447–432 BC), designed by Iktinos and Kallikrates with Phidias supervising sculpture; a key example of Doric architecture and classical proportion.

Construction system based on the semicircular arch, barrel vault, groin vault and dome, often in concrete or stone; it allowed Romans to span large interiors such as the Pantheon and the Colosseum arcades.

Roman temple in Rome rebuilt under Hadrian around AD 118–125, covered by a coffered concrete dome with an oculus; later converted into a church, it preserves the best-preserved ancient dome.

Longitudinal church layout with a nave, side aisles and an apse, inherited from Roman civic halls; it became the standard plan for Christian churches in the West.

Semicircular area enclosed by the lintel and the arches above a doorway; in Romanesque and Gothic churches it carries the main sculpted relief, usually a Last Judgement.

Each of the concentric moulded bands framing a Romanesque or Gothic doorway, often carved with figures; several archivolts step back into the wall around the tympanum.

Image of Christ as ruler of the world, frontal, bearded and holding a book, set inside a mandorla; standard in Romanesque apse frescoes and tympana, as at Taüll or Moissac.

Church layout with a long nave crossed by a shorter transept, producing the shape of a Latin cross; typical of Romanesque and Gothic pilgrimage churches with an ambulatory and radiating chapels.

Continuous aisle curving around the apse behind the choir, allowing pilgrims to circulate without disturbing the liturgy; common in Romanesque pilgrimage churches such as Santiago de Compostela.

Ring of small chapels opening off the ambulatory around a church apse, each with its own altar; a hallmark of French and Spanish Romanesque pilgrimage architecture.

Stone vault in which diagonal ribs carry the weight and frame the webs; pointed ribs let Gothic builders cover bays of different shapes and concentrate loads on piers.

Arch formed by two intersecting curves meeting at a point; it directs thrust more steeply than a round arch, allowing taller, lighter Gothic structures and varied bay widths.

External arched support that transfers the outward thrust of a high vault across a gap to a pier; it made possible the tall, thin-walled Gothic nave with large windows.

Coloured glass cut into pieces, joined with lead cames and set in tracery; in Gothic churches it fills the enlarged windows and is read as a vehicle of divine light and teaching.

Large circular window with stone tracery radiating from a centre, filled with stained glass; a feature of Gothic façades, especially French cathedrals such as Chartres and Notre-Dame.

Stone framework dividing a Gothic window into panels and patterns, either plate tracery (pierced wall) or bar tracery (moulded bars); also applied decoratively to walls and gables.

Geometric method of representing three-dimensional space on a flat surface using a horizon line and vanishing point, codified by Alberti in 1435; central to Renaissance painting.

Painting technique of blending tones so softly that outlines dissolve into a smoky haze; Leonardo da Vinci used it for faces and distant landscapes, as in the Mona Lisa.

Strong contrast between light and dark used to model volume and drama; in the Baroque it becomes tenebrism, with figures emerging from near-black backgrounds, as in Caravaggio.

Extreme form of chiaroscuro in which a single harsh light picks out figures against a dark, shallow background; associated with Caravaggio and his followers in the 17th century.

Baroque preference for ordinary, sometimes unidealised bodies and real models in religious scenes, combined with dramatic light and movement; opposed to Renaissance idealisation.

Depicting a figure or object at an angle so that it appears to recede in depth, often with exaggerated proportions; used by Renaissance and Baroque painters to create illusionistic space.

Painting that creates the illusion of real three-dimensional objects or architecture, often on ceilings and walls; Baroque ceiling frescoes use it to open roofs to painted skies.

Illusionistic painted architecture, usually on ceilings, that extends real space into a fictive one; a Baroque speciality seen in frescoes by Pozzo and Tiepolo.

Late 18th- and early 19th-century movement reviving Greek and Roman forms and subjects, valuing reason, clarity and moral exemplum; promoted by Winckelmann's writings and the Grand Tour.

Educational journey of wealthy Europeans through Italy and Greece in the 18th century, studying antiquities and Renaissance art; it fuelled Neoclassical taste and collecting.

Movement around 1800–1850 stressing emotion, imagination, individual genius and untamed nature; in painting it favours dramatic colour, movement and sublime or historical subjects.

Aesthetic category describing awe mixed with terror before vast or overwhelming nature; developed by Burke and Kant and central to Romantic landscape painting.

Aesthetic ideal of irregular, varied and painterly scenery, between beautiful and sublime; it shaped 18th- and 19th-century landscape design, travel and watercolour painting.

Mid-19th-century movement depicting everyday life, work and social conditions without idealisation, using ordinary subjects and often unpolished technique; linked to Courbet and Millet.

French movement from the 1870s painting outdoors to capture fleeting effects of light and atmosphere with broken colour and loose brushwork; named after Monet's Impression, Sunrise.

Painting outdoors directly from the motif, made practical by portable paint tubes and box easels; it let Impressionists record changing light and weather on the spot.

Technique of building images from small dots of pure colour that blend optically at a distance; practised by Seurat and Signac under the name Neo-Impressionism.

Method of separating colour into adjacent strokes or dots so the eye mixes them, based on colour theory; the term is often used for Italian Neo-Impressionism.

Artists or movements ahead of accepted taste, deliberately breaking conventions and often proposing new social or formal ideas; the term organises the history of early 20th-century art.

Movement begun by Picasso and Braque around 1907 that breaks objects into facets and shows several viewpoints at once; it moves from analytic to synthetic phases and includes collage.

Work made by gluing paper, newsprint, fabric or other materials onto a surface; used by Cubists and later by Dada and Pop artists to bring everyday reality into art.

Ordinary manufactured object chosen and presented as art by the artist, as with Duchamp's urinal; it challenges authorship, craft and the definition of the artwork.

Early 20th-century tendency, especially German, using distorted forms, harsh colour and visible brushwork to convey intense subjective emotion; seen in Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter.

Art that abandons or greatly reduces representation of visible reality, relying on form, colour, line or gesture; developed from Kandinsky and Malevich to postwar movements.

Postwar American approach in which paint is dripped, poured or splashed as a record of the painter's physical gesture; associated with Jackson Pollock and abstract expressionism.

Movement of the 1950s–60s taking imagery from advertising, comics, packaging and celebrities, often in flat, bright, screen-printed repetition; linked to Warhol and Lichtenstein.

Art in which the idea or instruction matters more than the finished object, often using text, documentation or ephemeral actions; it emerged in the 1960s as a critique of the art market.

Artwork arranged in a whole room or space so the viewer enters it, combining objects, light, sound or video; it became a major format from the 1970s onwards.