Castilla y León PAU History of Art flashcards

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

Ziggurat

Stepped mud-brick platform temple of ancient Mesopotamia, accessed by stairs or ramps, with a shrine at the summit; examples include the White Temple of Uruk and the ziggurat of Ur.

Contrapposto

Pose in which weight rests on one leg, tilting the hips and shoulders in opposite directions; it introduces naturalistic balance and appears in Greek Severe and Classical sculpture.

Kouros and kore

Archaic Greek free-standing statues of nude young men and clothed young women, frontal, with stiff stance and Archaic smile, used as votive or funerary offerings.

Black-figure and red-figure

Two Attic vase-painting techniques: black-figure paints black silhouettes on red clay with incised detail; red-figure reserves figures in red against a painted black ground.

Opus caementicium

Roman concrete made of lime mortar and aggregate, enabling vaults, domes, and massive structures; combined with brick facing it shaped the Pantheon and the Baths of Caracalla.

Pendentive

Spherical triangular element that transfers the weight of a circular dome onto four supporting piers or columns; essential to Byzantine and later domed architecture such as Hagia Sophia.

Mudéjar

Iberian style produced by Islamic craftsmen for Christian patrons, using brick, horseshoe arches, alfiz frames, and tilework; notable in Toledo, Teruel, and Seville.

Flying buttress

Exterior arched support that transmits the thrust of a vault to a pier, allowing tall walls with large windows; a defining structural element of Gothic architecture.

Muqarnas

Three-dimensional geometric vaulting of interlocking niches used in Islamic architecture for domes, portals, and cornices; prominent in the Alhambra and the Aljafería.

Fresco

Painting technique applying pigment to wet lime plaster, so the image is fixed by carbonation; durable and suited to large wall cycles, as in Roman and Renaissance interiors.

Iconography

Study of the subjects, symbols, and narrative content of an artwork; iconology goes further to interpret those symbols within their cultural and historical context.

Sfumato

Painting technique of soft, imperceptible transitions between tones, producing hazy atmosphere and blurred contours; associated with Leonardo, especially the Mona Lisa.

Tenebrism

Dramatic chiaroscuro in which figures emerge from deep shadow under a strong, directional light; associated with Caravaggio and his followers, including Ribera.

Linear perspective

Mathematical system that projects three-dimensional space onto a flat surface using a vanishing point and orthogonals; codified in the early Florentine Renaissance.

Plateresque

Spanish Renaissance style of richly ornamented facades resembling silversmith work, with dense relief and classical motifs; the facade of the University of Salamanca is an example.

Herrerian style

Austere Spanish architecture named after Juan de Herrera, marked by granite, plain walls, and rigorous geometry; exemplified by the Monastery of El Escorial.

Churrigueresque

Highly ornate Spanish Baroque decoration named after the Churriguera family, using dense stucco, estípites, and gilded retables; seen in Salamanca and Granada.

Fêtes galantes

Rococo genre of elegant outdoor gatherings and courtship scenes in park settings, painted with delicate color; associated with Watteau and later French Rococo artists.

Estípite

Inverted pyramidal or obelisk-like support used in Spanish Baroque retables instead of classical columns, often stacked and heavily ornamented.

Bent-axis plan

Temple layout in which the entrance axis does not align with the inner shrine, forcing an indirect approach; characteristic of Mesopotamian and some Egyptian sanctuaries.

Composite view

Egyptian representational convention showing head in profile with frontal shoulders and eye, and legs in profile; it presents the most legible aspect of each body part.

Doric order

Greek architectural order with a plain capital, triglyph-and-metope frieze, and no base; considered the earliest and most austere of the classical orders.

Enfilade

Sequence of rooms aligned through connecting doorways along a single axis; used in Baroque palaces such as Versailles to organize ceremonial movement.

Pointillism

Neo-Impressionist technique of applying small dots of pure color that blend optically at a distance; developed by Seurat and Signac in the 1880s.

Readymade

Ordinary manufactured object presented as art by selection and context, challenging authorship and craft; a Dada strategy associated with Marcel Duchamp.

Analytic Cubism

Early Cubist phase around 1908–1912 in which objects are fragmented into faceted planes and shown from multiple viewpoints, often in near-monochrome browns and grays.

Synthetic Cubism

Later Cubist phase from about 1912 that builds images from flatter, larger shapes and incorporates collage and pasted paper, emphasizing construction rather than analysis.

Automatism

Surrealist technique of creating without conscious control, through rapid drawing, automatic writing, or chance procedures, to access the unconscious.

Bauhaus

German school founded by Walter Gropius in 1919 that united fine art, craft, and design; its functionalist approach shaped modern architecture and industrial design.

Sublime

Aesthetic category of overwhelming grandeur and awe, mingled with terror, evoked by vast landscapes or dramatic natural forces; central to Romantic landscape painting.

Synthetism

Post-Impressionist approach using flat areas of non-natural color, bold outlines, and simplified forms to express ideas rather than observed appearances; linked to Gauguin.

Tympanum

Semicircular area above a portal lintel, framed by archivolts and used for sculpted religious programmes; central to Romanesque and Gothic church entrances.

Panofsky's three levels

Method of interpretation moving from pre-iconographic description, to iconographic identification of subjects, to iconological interpretation of cultural meaning.