Castilla y León PAU Cultural and Artistic Movements Exam cheat sheet

Mesopotamia: the ziggurat is a stepped mud-brick platform-temple; the White Temple of Uruk and the ziggurat of Ur are canonical examples, with buttressed walls and a bent-axis approach.

Mesopotamian sculpture is characterized by frontality, hieratic scale, and the votive figure with clasped hands; the Stele of Hammurabi shows the king before the god Shamash, legitimizing law through divine investiture.

Egyptian canon: composite view (profile head, frontal shoulders, profile legs), registers, and hieroglyphic captioning; proportion followed a grid of 18 squares to the hairline, 21 to the crown.

Egyptian architecture: post-and-lintel trabeation, tapered columns (papyrus, lotus, palm capitals), battered walls; the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari uses terraced colonnades cut into the cliff.

Greek orders: Doric (no base, plain capital, triglyph/metope frieze), Ionic (base, volute capital, continuous frieze), Corinthian (acanthus capital); the Parthenon is Doric peripteral octastyle with Ionic frieze elements.

Greek sculpture periodization: Archaic (kouros/kore, frontal, Archaic smile), Severe (contrapposto emerging, Olympia pediments), Classical (Polykleitos' canon of proportion, Doryphoros), Hellenistic (pathos, diagonal composition, Laocoön, Pergamon altar).

Roman engineering and typologies: opus caementicium (concrete) enables the arch, vault, and dome; the Pantheon's 43.3 m coffered dome with oculus; amphitheater (Colosseum), basilica, thermae, triumphal arch, and aqueduct are Roman building types.

Roman sculpture and painting: veristic portraiture of the Republic, imperial idealization (Augustus of Prima Porta with cuirass program), historical relief (Trajan's Column spiral frieze), and Pompeian wall-painting styles I–IV ending in illusionistic architecture.

Byzantine architecture centers on the domed basilica: Hagia Sophia (532–537, Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus) combines a central dome with a longitudinal nave; pendentives transfer the dome to a square bay.

Byzantine image doctrine: icon (encaustic or tempera on panel), gold ground signaling sacred space, frontality and hieratic scale; iconoclasm (726–843) and the triumph of images shape later Orthodox art.

Islamic architecture features the hypostyle mosque with qibla wall, mihrab, minbar, and minaret; the horseshoe arch and ribbed vault appear in Córdoba's Mezquita, and muqarnas vaulting marks later Islamic interiors.

Islamic ornament avoids figural imagery in religious contexts and favors aniconic systems: arabesque, geometric tessellation (girih), epigraphic bands in Kufic and naskh script, and mashrabiya latticework.

Romanesque: heavy masonry, barrel and groin vaults, thick walls with small openings, compound piers, and the pilgrimage plan (ambulatory with radiating chapels); sculpture is concentrated in portals, capitals, and cloisters.

Romanesque sculpture follows the tympanum program: Christ in Majesty (Maiestas Domini) with Evangelist symbols, the Last Judgment, and didactic capitals; figures are elongated and subordinated to architectural frames.

Gothic structural system: pointed arch, rib vault, and flying buttress allow thinner walls and large stained-glass windows; elevation is typically three-story (arcade, triforium, clerestory).

Gothic sculpture moves from the stylized column-statues of Chartres to the naturalistic drapery and individualized faces of Reims and Naumburg; Gothic painting includes panel altarpieces and manuscript illumination with gold leaf.

Renaissance linear perspective: Alberti's costruzione legittima and Brunelleschi's demonstration establish a single vanishing point; Masaccio's Trinity is an early monumental application.

Quattrocento sculptural and architectural markers: Brunelleschi's dome of Florence Cathedral (herringbone brick, double shell), Donatello's David (bronze, contrapposto), and Alberti's façade theory in De re aedificatoria.

High Renaissance: Leonardo (sfumato, atmospheric perspective), Michelangelo (terribilità, muscular anatomy, Sistine ceiling), Raphael (balanced composition, Stanza della Segnatura); center on Rome after 1500.

Mannerism intervenes c. 1520–1580: figura serpentinata, elongated proportions, acidic color, spatial ambiguity; Parmigianino's Madonna of the Long Neck and Pontormo's Descent are diagnostic.

Baroque: dynamic diagonals, dramatic chiaroscuro (tenebrism in Caravaggio), open composition, and theatrical light; the church becomes a total ensemble of architecture, sculpture, and painting.

Baroque architecture: Bernini's colonnade and baldachin at St Peter's, Borromini's undulating façades (San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane), and the curved, sculptural wall replace Renaissance rectilinear clarity.

Spanish Baroque: naturalism plus religious intensity; Zurbarán's still-life austerity, Ribera's tenebrism, Murillo's sweetness, and Velázquez's Las Meninas as a meditation on representation and the royal gaze.

Baroque ceiling painting uses quadratura and di sotto in sù illusionism to dissolve the ceiling plane; the genre peaks in Pozzo's Sant'Ignazio nave fresco.

Neoclassicism (c. 1750–1830): Winckelmann's idealization of Greek art, archaeological excavation at Pompeii and Herculaneum, rational line over color, and moralizing subjects; David's Oath of the Horatii is the manifesto image.

Neoclassical architecture: Greek Revival and Empire styles, the return to Doric purity, and urban monuments such as the Brandenburg Gate and the Madeleine in Paris.

Romanticism (c. 1800–1850): primacy of feeling, sublime landscape, ruins, storm and night, national and medieval revival; Géricault's Raft of the Medusa and Friedrich's Rückenfigur landscapes are diagnostic.

Realism (c. 1840–1870): Courbet's program of painting only what is visible, genre elevation of labor, and plein-air practice; Millet, Daumier, and the Barbizon school extend the tendency.

Impressionism (1874–1886): visible brushstroke, broken color, alla prima painting, serial motifs (Monet's haystacks and Rouen Cathedral), and subjects of modern urban leisure.

Impressionist technique rests on color theory: complementary contrast, optical mixture, avoidance of black, and the 1874 Société Anonyme exhibition that gave the group its name from Monet's Impression, Sunrise.

Post-Impressionism (c. 1886–1905) is a set of divergent solutions: Seurat's pointillism and color science, Cézanne's constructive planes, Van Gogh's expressive impasto, Gauguin's synthetism and cloisonnism.

Symbolism and Art Nouveau overlap the end of the century: flat decorative pattern, sinuous line, and interior states; Mucha, Klimt, and Gaudí carry the ornamental impulse into design and architecture.

Fauvism (1905–1908): arbitrary non-descriptive color, loose facture, and the Salon d'Automne label; Matisse's Luxe, Calme et Volupté and Derain's London views are key works.

Cubism: analytic phase (1908–1912) fractures form into faceted planes with a restricted ochre-grey palette; synthetic phase (1912–1914) reintroduces color, collage, papier collé, and legible signs.

Cubist devices: multiple viewpoints, passage (shallow transitional planes), stenciled letters, and the grid; Braque and Picasso are the principals, with Gris and Léger systematizing the language.

Expressionism: German groups Die Brücke (Dresden, 1905) and Der Blaue Reiter (Munich, 1911); angular distortion, harsh color, and psychological intensity in Kirchner, Nolde, Kandinsky, and Marc.

Futurism (1909 manifesto, Marinetti): speed, technology, and simultaneity; Balla's dynamism and Boccioni's Unique Forms of Continuity in Space translate motion into sculptural form.

Surrealism (1924 Breton manifesto): automatism and dream imagery; Dalí's paranoiac-critical method, Miró's biomorphic signs, Magritte's visual puns, and Ernst's frottage and collage are distinct strategies.

Abstraction: Kandinsky's non-objective painting after 1910, Malevich's Suprematism (Black Square, 1915), Mondrian's De Stijl neoplasticism (primary colors plus noncolors in orthogonal grids), and Tatlin's Constructivism.

Dada (Zurich, 1916) precedes and feeds Surrealism: readymades (Duchamp), photomontage (Höch), and anti-art provocation dissolve the boundary between artwork and concept.

Abstract Expressionism (New York, 1940s–50s): action painting (Pollock's drip, De Kooning's gestural figure) versus color field (Rothko's floating rectangles, Newman's zips, Still's impasto).

Clement Greenberg's formalist criticism frames modernist painting as medium-specific, flat, and self-critical; Harold Rosenberg's 'action painting' counters with process over object.

Pop Art (1950s–60s): appropriation of advertising, comics, and celebrity imagery; Warhol's silkscreen repetition and Factory, Lichtenstein's Ben-Day dots, Hamilton's collage that named the tendency.

Minimalism (1960s): industrial materials, serial repetition, and the 'specific object'; Judd's boxes, Stella's stripes, Morris's gestalt forms; Michael Fried's 'Art and Objecthood' frames the debate.

Conceptual Art (1965–75): the idea precedes and displaces the object; Kosuth's art-as-definition, Weiner's text works, Haacke's institutional critique, and the dematerialized artwork.

Earthworks, performance, and body art extend the 1960s–70s field: Smithson's Spiral Jetty, Long's walks, Abramović's endurance pieces, and Beuys's social sculpture.

Postmodernism (late 1970s onward): pluralism, pastiche, irony, and critique of the modernist master narrative; Lyotard's 'incredulity toward metanarratives' and Jameson's pastiche are key concepts.

Appropriation and identity politics shape the 1980s: Sherman's staged film stills, Levine's rephotographed Walker Evans, Basquiat's neo-expressionist text-image, and the Pictures Generation critique of originality.

Prehistoric heritage: the cave of Altamira (Cantabria) with polychrome bison; in Castilla y León, the Sierra de Atapuerca sites (Burgos) document early human occupation and are UNESCO World Heritage.

Roman heritage in Castilla y León: the aqueduct of Segovia (granite ashlar, no mortar, double arcade), the Roman walls of Lugo-adjacent tradition, and the mosaics and villas of the Duero basin.

Visigothic and pre-Romanesque: San Juan de Baños (Palencia, 661, horseshoe arches, carved friezes), Santa María de Quintanilla de las Viñas (Burgos), and the Mozarabic churches of the repoblación.

Romanesque in Castilla y León: the Camino de Santiago corridor; the Panteón de los Reyes at San Isidro (León) with its painted cycle, and the cloister of Santo Domingo de Silos (Burgos) with its carved capitals.

Gothic in Castilla y León: Burgos Cathedral (begun 1221, spires by Juan de Colonia), León Cathedral (French rayonnant model, vast stained glass), and Segovia Cathedral (late Gothic, Juan Gil de Hontañón).

Renaissance and Plateresque: the façade of San Pablo and the Colegio de San Gregorio in Valladolid, the Escalera Dorada of Burgos Cathedral by Diego de Siloé, and the plateresque ornament of the University of Salamanca.

Golden Age painting linked to the region: El Greco in Toledo, but Castilian patronage and the sculptural schools of Valladolid (Gregorio Fernández's polychrome pasos) define the Spanish Baroque image.

Modern heritage: Gaudí's Episcopal Palace in Astorga and Casa Botines in León; the Museo Nacional de Escultura in Valladolid (San Gregorio) holds the premier collection of Spanish polychrome sculpture.

Formal analysis order: identify medium and support, then composition and format, then line, shape, color (hue, value, saturation), texture, light, space, and scale, before iconography and context.

Iconography versus iconology (Panofsky): pre-iconographic description, iconographic identification of subject, and iconological interpretation of cultural meaning are three distinct levels.

Stylistic dating tools: proportion systems, drapery handling, perspective construction, palette, and brushwork; connoisseurship compares these against securely dated works.

Architectural analysis vocabulary: plan types (basilical, central, Greek cross, Latin cross), elevation, bay, trabeation versus arcuation, vault types, and the structural logic of thrust and counterthrust.

Sculpture terms: free-standing versus relief (bas-relief, haut-relief), additive modeling versus subtractive carving, casting (lost wax), polychromy, and the concept of the sculptural mass.

Text analysis for cultural sources: distinguish primary from secondary sources, identify genre (chronicle, treatise, contract, manifesto), and separate the author's intention from later reception.

Comparative method: place two works side by side and test specific variables (spatial construction, figure-ground, light source, narrative focus) rather than offering general impressions.

Chronology anchors: Ancient (c. 3500 BCE–476 CE), Medieval (5th–15th c.), Renaissance (15th–16th c.), Baroque (17th c.), 19th century, avant-gardes (1900–1945), postwar (1945–present).