Castilla y León PAU Cultural and Artistic Movements Exam flashcards

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

Ziggurat

Stepped mud-brick temple platform of ancient Mesopotamia, with buttressed walls and a shrine on top, as at Ur and Uruk. It expressed divine presence and administrative power.

Egyptian composite view

Convention combining frontal shoulders and eye with profile head and legs, so each part is shown from its most legible angle. Figures are scaled by hierarchy and arranged in registers.

Contrapposto

Pose in which weight rests on one leg, tilting the pelvis and shoulders in opposing directions. It marks the transition from Archaic rigidity to Classical naturalism in Greek sculpture.

Pendentive

Curved triangular vaulting element that transfers the circular rim of a dome onto a square supporting bay. It enables the domed basilica plan of Byzantine architecture.

Mihrab and qibla

Mihrab is the niche marking the qibla, the direction of prayer toward Mecca, in a mosque's qibla wall. It organizes the interior and often carries the richest ornament.

Flying buttress

External arched support carrying the thrust of a nave vault to a pier, freeing the wall for large windows. It is a defining structural device of Gothic architecture.

Tympanum

Semicircular field above a portal lintel, usually carved with Christ in Majesty or the Last Judgment. It functions as a didactic threshold for Romanesque and Gothic churches.

Linear perspective

Geometric construction in which parallel lines converge at a single vanishing point, producing measurable illusionistic depth. Codified in the fifteenth-century Italian Renaissance.

Sfumato

Leonardo's technique of extremely subtle tonal transitions that blur contours and create smoky atmosphere. It softens edges to model form and mood.

Tenebrism

Extreme chiaroscuro in which figures emerge from near-total darkness under a raking light source. Caravaggio made it the signature of the Italian Baroque.

Quadratura

Illusionistic ceiling painting that dissolves architecture into fictive openings and sky. It uses di sotto in su perspective to extend real space upward.

Neoclassicism

Late eighteenth-century revival of Greek and Roman forms emphasizing rational line, archaeological correctness, and moralizing subjects. David's Oath of the Horatii exemplifies its style.

Impasto

Thick application of paint so that brush or palette-knife marks stand out from the surface. It makes facture visible and is central to expressionist and post-impressionist handling.

Pointillism

Seurat's method of building form from small dots of unmixed color that blend optically at a distance. It applies color theory systematically to painting.

Analytic Cubism

Phase around 1908–1912 that fractures objects into faceted planes and multiple viewpoints in a restricted ochre-grey palette. Form is decomposed rather than described.

Papier collé

Collage technique using pasted paper, introduced in Synthetic Cubism. It reintroduces color, flatness, and everyday signs into the picture plane.

Paranoiac-critical method

Dalí's technique of cultivating delusional associations to produce double images and irrational juxtapositions. It turned Surrealist dream imagery into a systematic procedure.

Suprematism

Malevich's non-objective system of geometric forms, especially the Black Square, freed from representation. It sought pure feeling in painting after 1915.

Color field painting

Abstract Expressionist tendency using large, soft-edged areas of unified color to create immersive optical fields. Rothko and Newman are principal figures.

Appropriation

Deliberate reuse of existing images or objects, often to question originality and authorship. It defines Pop Art and the 1980s Pictures Generation practice.

Dematerialization

Shift away from the art object toward idea, instruction, or documentation. Conceptual Art of the 1960s makes the concept primary and the artifact optional.

Aqueduct of Segovia

Roman granite aqueduct built without mortar, using a double tier of arches. It is the outstanding Roman monument of Castilla y León.

San Juan de Baños

Visigothic church in Palencia consecrated in 661, with horseshoe arches and carved friezes. It is a key monument of early medieval Castilian architecture.

Santo Domingo de Silos

Burgos monastery whose Romanesque cloister carries carved capitals and reliefs. It is a major stop on the Camino de Santiago and a benchmark of Romanesque sculpture.

León Cathedral

Thirteenth-century Gothic cathedral modeled on French rayonnant forms, with vast stained-glass windows and a tripartite elevation. It is the leading Gothic monument of León.

Plateresque

Spanish Renaissance ornamental mode resembling silversmith work, with dense surface relief on façades. The University of Salamanca and Valladolid's San Pablo exemplify it.

Iconography

Identification of subject matter through conventional signs and attributes, such as a saint's emblem. It precedes iconological interpretation of cultural meaning.

Iconology

Panofsky's third level of interpretation, reading a work's subject and form as symptoms of its cultural and intellectual context. It goes beyond identification to meaning.

Bent-axis plan

Temple arrangement in which the entrance path turns at an angle before reaching the shrine. It is characteristic of Mesopotamian ziggurat temples.

Hieratic scale

Convention in which the most important figure is depicted largest, regardless of spatial position. It conveys rank and is common in Egyptian and medieval art.

Figura serpentinata

Mannerist spiral pose in which the body twists along an S-curve. It expresses grace and artificial elegance rather than Classical balance.

Readymade

Duchamp's term for an ordinary manufactured object presented as art with minimal alteration. It shifts artistic value from craft to selection and concept.