Canary Islands PAU Artistic Foundations Exam flashcards

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

Composite view (Egypt)

Egyptian convention combining frontal shoulders and eye with profile head and legs, following a fixed grid, so the most characteristic aspect of each body part is shown.

Contrapposto

Weight shifted onto one leg so hips and shoulders tilt in opposition, producing an S-curve and naturalistic balance; canonical in Classical Greek sculpture from Polykleitos onward.

Veristic portraiture

Roman Republican portrait style recording age, wrinkles and individual features without idealization, rooted in ancestral wax masks and expressing gravitas and civic virtue.

Opus caementicium

Roman concrete of lime mortar and aggregate, laid with wooden formwork, which enabled arches, vaults and domes such as the Pantheon's 43-metre span.

Pendentive

Curved triangular transition between a square bay and a circular dome, allowing a dome over a square plan; central to Byzantine architecture such as Hagia Sophia.

Tympanum

Semicircular area above a portal lintel and below the arch, usually carved with a Last Judgment or theophany organized hierarchically around a central Christ in majesty.

Flying buttress

Exterior arched support carrying the thrust of a high vault across to a pier, freeing the Gothic wall for tall windows and stained glass.

Mandorla

Almond-shaped aureole of light framing Christ or the Virgin in medieval art, signaling divine glory and often used in Romanesque apse and portal compositions.

Linear perspective

System codified by Alberti in which orthogonals converge at a single vanishing point on the horizon, producing measurable illusion of depth on a flat surface.

Sfumato

Leonardo's technique of blending tones in imperceptible transitions without hard contour, creating soft atmospheric modeling and psychological ambiguity, as in the Mona Lisa.

Figura serpentinata

Mannerist twisting, serpentine pose implying rotation and graceful instability, derived from Michelangelo and codified by theorists such as Lomazzo.

Disegno versus colore

Renaissance and Mannerist debate opposing drawing and intellectual design (Florence) to color and optical handling (Venice) as the basis of painting's worth.

Tenebrism

Baroque use of near-total darkness pierced by a single strong light source, isolating figures dramatically; associated with Caravaggio and his followers.

Sfondato ceiling

Baroque illusionistic ceiling painting that dissolves the architectural boundary into an open sky, extending space beyond the vault above the viewer.

Fête galante

Watteau's Rococo category of elegant outdoor scenes of aristocratic leisure, music and courtship in parkland settings, accepted by the Academy in 1717.

Rocaille ornament

Asymmetric Rococo decoration of shell, scroll and plant forms in stucco or carving, applied to interiors, furniture and frames in pastel-toned settings.

Neoclassical ideal

Winckelmann-derived aesthetic of noble simplicity and calm grandeur, favoring clear contour, archaeological correctness and moralizing classical subjects over Rococo sensuality.

The sublime

Aesthetic category of awe and pleasurable terror aroused by vast, powerful or obscure phenomena, central to Romantic landscape painting and theory from Burke and Kant.

Pointillism

Seurat's method of applying small dots of unmixed color to be optically blended by the viewer, systematizing Impressionist color practice under scientific color theory.

Salon des Refusés

1863 exhibition of works rejected by the official Salon jury, authorized by Napoleon III; it publicly exposed academic exclusion and legitimized avant-garde alternatives.

Readymade

Duchamp's manufactured object presented as art with minimal intervention, shifting artistic value from craft to selection and concept, founding Conceptual art's premise.

Analytic Cubism

Early Cubist phase of fragmented, faceted forms in near-monochrome brown and grey, presenting objects from multiple viewpoints and dissolving traditional illusionistic space.

Synthetic Cubism

Later Cubist phase using collage, papier collé and flat overlapping planes with brighter color and legible signs, treating the picture as construction rather than window.

Suprematism

Malevich's non-objective system of basic geometric forms on white ground, claiming to reach pure feeling and to abolish reference to the visible world.

Minimalism

1960s movement using industrial materials, serial repetition and simple geometric forms, emphasizing the viewer's bodily encounter with the object in real space.

Iconology

Panofsky's third interpretive level, reading a work's subject matter against its cultural, intellectual and social context to recover underlying meaning.

Hierarchy of genres

Academic ranking placing history painting highest, then portrait, genre, landscape and still life, because it demanded invention and intellectual labor.

Vanitas

Still-life type with skull, candle, hourglass or mirror that allegorizes mortality and the emptiness of earthly goods, common in seventeenth-century Dutch and Spanish painting.

Artesonado

Interior wooden ceiling of interlocking beams and coffers, brought by Mudéjar craftsmen to Spanish and Canarian churches, notable in La Laguna's convents and churches.

Bien de Interés Cultural

Spanish heritage designation (BIC) giving legal protection to monuments, historic gardens, sites and ethnographic assets under national and Canarian heritage law.

La Laguna historic centre

UNESCO World Heritage colonial town in Tenerife, laid out on a grid, retaining convents, churches and traditional houses with Canarian balconies and artesonado interiors.

Canarian volcanic materials

Local toba, basalt and pine used in island architecture and sculpture, giving churches thick walls, stone portals and sober surfaces adapted to trade-wind climate.