Canary Islands PAU Artistic Foundations Exam cheat sheet

Paleolithic cave art (Altamira, Lascaux) uses mineral pigments (ochre, manganese) applied by blowing or with fingers; natural rock contours are exploited rather than corrected.

Mesopotamian ziggurats are stepped mud-brick platforms with a shrine on top; the Stele of Hammurabi (c. 1750 BCE) pairs relief carving with cuneiform law code, showing hierarchy of scale before the king.

Egyptian canon of proportions: figures on a fixed grid of 18 squares to the hairline; head in profile, eye frontal, shoulders frontal, legs in profile - the so-called composite view.

Egyptian architecture: post-and-lintel trabeation, battered (sloping) walls, cavetto cornice; column capitals imitate papyrus, lotus and palm. Sculpture uses sunken relief, hard stone, and the nemes headdress as royal marker.

Greek orders: Doric (no base, plain capital, triglyph/metope frieze), Ionic (base, volute capital, continuous frieze), Corinthian (acanthus capital, invented c. 5th c. BCE, favored by Rome).

Greek sculpture chronology: Archaic kouros/kore (frontal, archaic smile) → Severe style (c. 480–450 BCE) → Classical contrapposto (Polykleitos' Doryphoros, canon of proportion) → Hellenistic pathos, torsion and theatrical groups (Laocoön, Pergamon altar).

Roman engineering markers: opus caementicium (concrete) enables the arch, vault and dome - Pantheon (c. 125 CE) dome spans 43.3 m with an oculus; the Colosseum stacks Tuscan, Ionic and Corinthian orders over engaged arcades.

Roman portraiture derives from imagines maiorum wax masks: veristic Republican heads stress age and gravitas; imperial portraits adopt idealized Hellenistic models and standardized hairstyles for dynastic identification.

Early Christian basilica plan: longitudinal nave, side aisles, apse, narthex, transept; derived from Roman civic basilica, with the Christian altar at the apse and the congregation facing east.

Byzantine characteristics: central-plan (domed) churches, pendentives carrying the dome (Hagia Sophia, 537), gold-ground mosaics, frontal hieratic figures, and the icon as a devotional object (iconoclasm 726–843 interrupted this).

Romanesque structural logic: thick masonry walls, small windows, barrel and groin vaults, transverse arches, and the pilgrimage plan (ambulatory with radiating chapels) to circulate relics without disturbing Mass.

Romanesque sculpture sits in portals, capitals and tympana; the tympanum (e.g. Last Judgment) follows a hierarchical layout with Christ in majesty at center, evangelist symbols, and the saved/condemned divided at his sides.

Gothic structural system: pointed arch, rib vault and flying buttress shift thrust outward, permitting tall clerestories with stained glass; the wall becomes a skeletal frame rather than a mass.

Gothic vertical chronology: Early Gothic (Suger's Saint-Denis choir, 1144) → High Gothic (Chartres, Reims, Amiens) → Rayonnant (bar tracery, Sainte-Chapelle) → Flamboyant (flame-like tracery).

Medieval iconography conventions: mandorla for divine glory, cruciform halo reserved for Christ, attributes identifying saints (Peter's keys, Catherine's wheel), and hierarchy of scale by theological importance rather than optical distance.

Manuscript illumination types: carpet pages and evangelist portraits in Insular books (Book of Kells), historiated initials, and marginal drôlerie; gold leaf on vellum with egg-tempera pigment.

Linear perspective: Alberti's costruzione legittima (De pictura, 1435) fixes a vanishing point on the horizon; Brunelleschi's experiments c. 1420 precede it. One-point perspective unifies pictorial space.

Renaissance proportion and anatomy: Vitruvian man, canon based on observation, contrapposto revived, and central-plan church design (Alberti's Sant'Andrea, Bramante's Tempietto) as ideal geometric forms.

Quattrocento vs Cinquecento: Quattrocento favors linearity, precise drawing and detailed description; High Renaissance (Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael c. 1500–1520) favors sfumato, monumental balance and idealized form.

Sfumato and chiaroscuro: Leonardo blends tones without hard contour; chiaroscuro models volume through light-dark contrast; both replace Quattrocento's outline-based modeling.

Mannerism markers (c. 1520–1600): figura serpentinata, elongated proportions, acidic or artificial color, spatial ambiguity, and citation of masters - Pontormo, Parmigianino, Bronzino, El Greco.

Northern Renaissance traits: oil glazing, obsessive surface detail, disguised symbolism (van Eyck, Campin), and later Antwerp/Italianate fusion (Massys, Scorel).

Printmaking transforms dissemination: woodcut (Dürer's Apocalypse) and engraving circulate compositions; the print market and reproductive engraving standardize style across Europe.

The paragone debate (painting vs sculpture) and disegno vs colore are the period's core theoretical axes; Vasari's Lives (1550) establishes the biographical model of art history.

Baroque defining devices: tenebrism (Caravaggio), dramatic diagonal composition, open form, theatrical lighting, and the total work of art uniting architecture, sculpture and painting (Bernini's Cornaro Chapel).

Baroque naturalism vs classicism: Carracci and Poussin favor legible, ordered composition and antique reference; Caravaggio and his followers favor unidealized models and stark light.

Ceiling painting evolves from quadro riportato (framed scenes, Annibale Carracci, Farnese Gallery) to the sfondato - illusionistic sky opening above the viewer (Pozzo, Sant'Ignazio; Tiepolo).

Dutch Golden Age specializations: genre, still life, landscape, portrait and marine painting; tonal realism (Rembrandt, Hals) and optical naturalism (Vermeer's camera-obscura-informed light).

Rococo markers (c. 1730–1770): asymmetry, rocaille ornament, pastel palette, S-curve and C-curve lines, gallant and intimate subjects - Watteau's fête galante, Boucher, Fragonard, Tiepolo.

Baroque architecture: dynamic façades, broken entablatures, oval plans, and light as a theological instrument (Bernini's Scala Regia, Borromini's San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane).

Spanish Baroque: sober surfaces, polychrome carved wood (imaginería), tenebrist naturalism - Ribera, Zurbarán, Velázquez, Murillo; the bodegón and vanitas carry moral readings.

Neoclassicism (c. 1750–1830): Winckelmann's ideal of 'noble simplicity and calm grandeur', archaeological excavation (Pompeii, Herculaneum), contour-based drawing, and moralizing classical subjects (David, Ingres).

Romanticism (c. 1800–1850): the sublime (Burke, Kant), ruins and storms, individual subjectivity, exoticism and medieval revival; color and atmosphere over outline (Géricault, Delacroix, Friedrich, Turner).

Realism (c. 1848–1870): Courbet's 'show me an angel and I'll paint one', contemporary labor and rural subjects, rejection of academic hierarchy of genres, and plein-air observation.

Academic system context: the École des Beaux-Arts, the Salon jury, the Prix de Rome; the Salon des Refusés (1863) and the Société anonyme (1874) mark institutional rupture.

Impressionism (1874–1886): broken color, visible brushwork, cropped photographic framing, serial motifs, and attention to light at a specific hour; plein-air painting enabled by tube paint.

Post-Impressionism as divergent solutions: Seurat's pointillism (optical mixture), Cézanne's constructive stroke and passage, Van Gogh's expressive impasto, Gauguin's cloisonnist flat color and synthetism.

Photography's impact: the camera (1839) supplies framing and instantaneous views, while lithography and the poster (Chéret, Toulouse-Lautrec) reshape public visual culture.

Symbolism and Art Nouveau close the century: dream imagery, flattened decorative line, organic ornament, and the integration of art with design and architecture.

Avant-garde sequence: Fauvism (1905, non-natural color) → Cubism (1907–1914, faceted, multiple viewpoints; Analytic then Synthetic with collage) → Futurism (speed, simultaneity) → Expressionism (Die Brücke, Der Blaue Reiter).

Abstraction paths: Kandinsky's non-objective painting from inner necessity, Malevich's Suprematism (Black Square, 1915), Mondrian's De Stijl grid, and Constructivism's utilitarian, factographic ethos.

Dada's anti-art strategies - readymade (Duchamp), photomontage (Heartfield, Höch), chance operations - establish the conceptual premise that the idea precedes the object.

Surrealism: automatism and dream imagery; Breton's manifestos (1924); veristic illusionism (Dalí, Magritte) versus biomorphic abstraction (Miró, Masson).

Postwar shifts: Abstract Expressionism (gesture vs color field), Pop Art's mass-media iconography and screen printing, Minimalism's industrial fabrication and literalism, and Conceptual Art's dematerialization.

Institutional critique and identity politics from the 1970s: site-specificity, performance and body art, feminist re-readings of the canon, and the politics of representation and display.

Postmodernism (c. 1975–1990): pastiche, quotation, pluralism, and the collapse of medium purity - historicist architecture, appropriation art, Pictures Generation.

Contemporary conditions: globalized biennials, participatory and relational practices, digital and post-internet art, and installation as the dominant exhibition format.

Mimesis (Plato: copy of a copy; Aristotle: imitation as cognition and catharsis) is the founding axis of Western art theory; it is challenged by Kant's aesthetics of disinterested judgment and the sublime.

Formal analysis vocabulary: line, shape, value, color (hue, saturation, value), texture, space, mass, volume, scale, proportion, rhythm, balance (symmetrical/asymmetrical), emphasis, unity and variety.

Compositional devices: leading lines, framing, repoussoir, pyramid composition, rule of thirds, isometry, foreshortening, anamorphosis, and the distinction between open and closed form.

Iconography tiers (Panofsky): pre-iconographic description → iconographic analysis (identifying subject via sources) → iconological interpretation (cultural meaning).

Attribute systems: saints' attributes, allegorical personifications (Justice with scales and sword, Prudence with mirror and serpent), and classical emblems transmitted via Ripa's Iconologia.

Technical terms: impasto, glaze, scumble, underpainting, fresco (buon fresco vs fresco secco), tempera, encaustic, sgraffito, and relief types (bas-relief, haut-relief, sunken).

Key theoretical texts to cite: Alberti's De pictura, Vasari's Lives, Winckelmann's History of Ancient Art, Lessing's Laocoön, Wölfflin's Principles of Art History (linear/painterly, closed/open).

Terminology precision: 'icon' vs 'idol', 'nave' vs 'aisle', 'tympanum' vs 'lintel', 'contrapposto' vs 'ponderation', 'avant-garde' vs 'modernism'.

Indigenous (Guanche and other pre-Hispanic Canarian) material culture survives mainly as rock art, cave sites, pottery and bone/stone implements; rock carvings include geometric and alphabetic-like motifs, and painted caves exist on Gran Canaria and Tenerife.

The conquest and evangelization (15th–16th c.) brought Andalusian and Flemish-influenced religious art: carved and polychrome devotional sculpture, retables, and the import of Flemish painting to island churches.

Key island centers: La Laguna (Tenerife, UNESCO World Heritage) preserves colonial urban fabric, convents and churches with Mudéjar-influenced coffered ceilings (artesonados).

Canarian religious architecture uses local materials - volcanic stone (toba, basalt), pine timber, and lime - with simple, thick-walled forms adapted to trade-wind climate.

The Canary Islands were a crossroads of Atlantic trade: Flemish, Portuguese, Genoese and later American influences appear in silverwork, imported paintings and the 'Canary' school of painting.

Notable heritage ensembles: Santa Cruz de La Palma's Renaissance façades and the Iglesia de El Salvador; Las Palmas cathedral (Santa Ana) with its painted ceiling and Diocesan Museum; San Cristóbal de La Laguna's cathedral and convent churches.

Modern and contemporary Canarian art engages landscape, island identity and migration; museums include TEA (Tenerife Espacio de las Artes) and CAAM (Las Palmas), plus the Museo Canario for prehistory.

Heritage protection framework: Spanish Law 16/1985 on Historical Heritage and Canarian Law 11/2019; BIC (Bien de Interés Cultural) categories include monument, historic garden, historic site and ethnographic site.