Castilla y León PAU History of Art cheat sheet
Castilla y León PAU History of Art · Keep the key ideas within reach.
Ancient and Classical Art (Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman)
Mesopotamian ziggurat: stepped mud-brick platform temple; the White Temple of Uruk and the ziggurat of Ur show bent-axis access and cella at the summit.
Egyptian canon of proportions: standing figure on an 18-square grid, seated on 14; frontal shoulders with profile head and legs is the composite view.
Egyptian column capitals are plant-derived: papyrus (bud and open), lotus, and palm; the Doric capital likely derives from Egyptian prototypes via the Aegean.
Greek order rules: Doric frieze = triglyphs + metopes; Ionic frieze = continuous; Corinthian capital = acanthus leaves, canonical from the 4th century BCE.
Greek vase painting sequence: Geometric, Orientalizing (black-figure, Proto-Corinthian), Attic black-figure, then red-figure (invented c. 530 BCE).
Roman concrete (opus caementicium) permits the barrel vault, cross vault, and dome; the Pantheon's 43.3 m dome equals its interior diameter.
Roman wall painting styles (Vitruvian): incrustation, architectural, ornamental, and illusionistic (intricate narrative), the last seen at Pompeii.
Greek sculpture periods: Archaic (kouros/kore, Archaic smile), Severe (contrapposto begins), Classical (Polykleitos' canon, 7:1), Hellenistic (pathos, Pergamene baroque).
Medieval Art (Early Christian, Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic, Islamic art in the Iberian Peninsula)
Early Christian basilica plan: wide nave, lower side aisles, apse, narthex, and sometimes transept; Santa Sabina and Old St Peter's are key models.
Byzantine features: central dome on pendentives, gold ground mosaics, hieratic frontal figures, and the Theotokos; Hagia Sophia and Ravenna's San Vitale are canonical.
Romanesque: heavy masonry, barrel and groin vaults, small windows, thick walls, tribune, ambulatory with radiating chapels for pilgrim traffic (Santiago de Compostela).
Gothic structural system: pointed arch, rib vault, and flying buttress; Chartres, Reims, and Amiens show the three-stage elevation (arcade, triforium, clerestory).
Mudéjar: Christian commissions executed by Islamic craftsmen in brick, with horseshoe arches, alfiz, and ceramic tilework; prominent in Toledo, Teruel, and Seville.
Islamic Iberian monuments: the Great Mosque of Córdoba (hypostyle, double-tier arches, mihrab), the Alhambra (Nasrid stucco, muqarnas), and the Giralda.
Romanesque sculpture on portals follows the tympanum programme with archivolts and jamb figures; the Pórtico de la Gloria (Master Mateo) is a Spanish benchmark.
Renaissance and Mannerism in Europe and Spain
Linear perspective codified by Brunelleschi and Alberti (one-point construction, vanishing point); Masaccio's Trinity demonstrates it c. 1427.
Quattrocento: central-plan churches, classical orders, and humanist proportion; Cinquecento: Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Venetian colorito (Titian).
Mannerism signals: figura serpentinata, elongated proportions, acid or non-natural color, spatial ambiguity, and artificial elegance (Parmigianino, El Greco).
Spanish Renaissance phases: Plateresque (ornate surface, facade-as-retable), Purista (classical restraint, e.g., Palace of Charles V in Granada), and Herrerian (austere, Escorial).
El Greco in Toledo: Byzantine-derived elongated figures, phosphorescent light, and dramatic diagonals (Burial of the Count of Orgaz).
Northern Renaissance: van Eyck and oil glazing, detailed realism, and concealed symbolism (Arnolfini Portrait); Dürer and Holbein carry Italianate ideals north.
Baroque and Rococo in Europe and Spain
Baroque traits: dynamic diagonals, dramatic chiaroscuro (tenebrism), theatrical light, and total-work integration of architecture, sculpture, and painting.
Italian Baroque: Caravaggio's tenebrism, Bernini's sculptural dynamism and scenographic ensembles, and Borromini's undulating facades and oval plans.
Spanish Baroque painting: naturalism plus religious function; Ribera (tenebrist), Zurbarán (ascetic still lifes), Murillo (soft sentiment), Velázquez (painterly space, Las Meninas).
Spanish Baroque architecture: Churrigueresque overdecoration (retables, estípites), and the Granada school (Alonso Cano); the Obradoiro facade of Santiago closes the Baroque.
Flemish vs Dutch Baroque: Rubens' energetic color and large workshop versus Rembrandt's psychological light and Vermeer's cool interior light.
Rococo: asymmetry, pastel palette, shell and rocaille ornament, playful subject matter; Watteau's fêtes galantes, Boucher, and Tiepolo's ceilings.
French Baroque: Versailles as an axis-and-enfilade palace with formal gardens; Poussin's classical rationalism differs from Rubens' colorism.
19th-Century Art (Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism)
Neoclassicism: Winckelmann's ideal, archaeological correctness, linear contour, moralizing history painting; David and Canova are central.
Romanticism: emotion, sublime landscape, dramatic color, and historical or exotic subjects; Goya bridges Neoclassicism and Romanticism (Third of May, Black Paintings).
Realism (c. 1840-1870): everyday labor, unidealized figures, and political critique; Courbet's Burial at Ornans and Millet's peasants define it.
Impressionism (from 1874 exhibition): broken brushwork, plein-air light, modern urban leisure; Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissarro, and Morisot.
Post-Impressionism: Seurat's pointillism, Cézanne's constructive planes, Van Gogh's expressive color, and Gauguin's synthetism.
Spanish 19th-century painting: academic portraiture and history painting (Fortuny's Orientalist detail), with Sorolla's luminous Valencian light at the turn of the century.
20th-Century and Contemporary Art (Avant-gardes, Modern Architecture, Postwar Movements)
Fauvism (1905): non-descriptive color; Cubism (Braque, Picasso): multiple viewpoints, faceted planes, collage; analytic then synthetic phases.
Expressionism (Die Brücke, Der Blaue Reiter) versus Futurism (Boccioni, Marinetti): movement, simultaneity, and machine aesthetics.
Dada: anti-art, readymades (Duchamp), photomontage; Surrealism: automatism and dream imagery (Dalí, Miró, Magritte, Ernst).
Modern architecture: Bauhaus (Gropius), De Stijl (Rietveld), Le Corbusier's five points and Dom-ino frame, Wright's organic Prairie and Usonian houses.
Picasso's Guernica (1937): Cubist-derived space and iconography of the bull, horse, and light-bearer; a Spanish Civil War commission for the Paris Exposition.
Postwar movements: Abstract Expressionism, Informalism, Pop Art, Minimalism, and Conceptual art; Spanish postwar: Dau al Set, El Paso, and Equipo Crónica.
Spanish modern architecture: Gaudí's organic Modernisme (Sagrada Família, Casa Batlló); rationalism and Brutalism follow in the mid-20th century.
Art Historical Method, Terminology, and Formal Analysis
Iconography identifies subject and symbols; iconology interprets meaning in cultural context (Panofsky's three levels: pre-iconographic, iconographic, iconological).
Formal analysis vocabulary: line, shape, color (hue, value, saturation), texture, space, mass, volume, composition, scale, and proportion.
Technique terms: fresco (buon fresco on wet plaster), tempera (egg binder), oil (glazes and impasto), encaustic, mosaic (tesserae), and printmaking methods.
Identify function and patronage: votive, funerary, devotional, civic, propagandistic, or private; commission context shapes format and iconography.
Stylistic dating cues: contrapposto, perspective, sfumato, tenebrism, broken brushwork, and non-objective abstraction each anchor a period.
Provenance and attribution reasoning rely on documentary sources, connoisseurship of handling, materials analysis, and comparison with securely dated works.
Describe a work in exam order: identity/date/author, subject and iconography, formal analysis, technique, function and context, and stylistic classification.