Catalonia PAU History of Art cheat sheet

Venus figurines (Willendorf, c. 28,000 BCE) show exaggerated fertility features and no facial detail; Upper Paleolithic portable art.

Lascaux and Altamira cave paintings use earth pigments (ochre, manganese) applied by blowing and brush; mostly animals, few humans.

Mesopotamian ziggurats are stepped mud-brick platforms with a shrine on top; the White Temple of Uruk and the Ur ziggurat are canonical examples.

Sumerian votive statues (Tell Asmar hoard) have clasped hands, wide inlaid eyes, and cylindrical bodies; scale reflects devotional hierarchy.

Egyptian canon of proportions: 18 squares from sole to hairline; composite view with frontal shoulders and profile head; Amarna period breaks it.

Egyptian Old Kingdom mastaba to pyramid sequence: Djoser step pyramid, Sneferu's Bent and Red pyramids, Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza.

Greek orders: Doric (no base, plain capital, triglyph/metope frieze), Ionic (volute capital, continuous frieze), Corinthian (acanthus capital).

Greek sculpture progression: Archaic kouros (rigid, frontal, Archaic smile) → Classical contrapposto (Kritios Boy, Polykleitos' Doryphoros) → Hellenistic drama (Laocoön, Pergamon altar).

Roman innovations: opus caementicium (concrete), the arch, vault and dome (Pantheon), and veristic portraiture; Pompeian frescoes in four styles.

Early Christian basilica plan: longitudinal nave with clerestory, side aisles, apse, and wooden trussed roof; Santa Sabina and Old St. Peter's are models.

Byzantine churches use a central Greek cross plan with a pendentive dome; Hagia Sophia combines a central dome with buttressing half-domes.

Byzantine mosaics use glass tesserae (smalti) set in mortar at slight angles to catch light; gold grounds signal sacred space.

Iconoclasm (726–843) interrupted figurative imagery; post-iconoclast art codifies icon painting with frontal poses, large eyes, and gold halos.

Romanesque: thick masonry walls, barrel and groin vaults, small windows, heavy piers, and sculpted tympana (Autun, Moissac, Vézelay).

Romanesque pilgrimage church plan: three-aisled nave, transept, ambulatory with radiating chapels to circulate relics without disturbing services.

Gothic structural system: pointed arch, rib vault, and flying buttress; these allow thinner walls and large stained-glass windows.

Gothic verticality: Chartres (early), Reims, Amiens (High Gothic), and Sainte-Chapelle with its reduced wall surface and extensive glazing.

Gothic sculpture moves from the rigid jamb figures of Chartres to the more naturalistic, S-curved figures of Reims and the Naumburg workshop.

Linear perspective: Alberti codifies the vanishing-point construction in De pictura (1435); Masaccio's Holy Trinity is an early painted example.

Chiaroscuro and sfumato: Leonardo models form with light-dark transitions and soft blurred contours (Mona Lisa, Virgin of the Rocks).

Anatomical and antique study drives High Renaissance classicism: balanced composition, centralised plan (Bramante's Tempietto), and ideal proportions.

Raphael's School of Athens uses a central vanishing point, a symmetrical architectural setting, and grouped figures to organise meaning.

Michelangelo's terribilità: muscular, twisting bodies; the Sistine ceiling and the contrapposto of the David express psychological tension.

Mannerism (c. 1520–1600): elongated proportions, artificial colours, ambiguous space, figura serpentinata; Parmigianino's Madonna of the Long Neck.

Venetian colourito: oil glazing and loose brushwork over disegno; Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto emphasise light and atmosphere.

Northern Renaissance: van Eyck's oil technique and microscopic detail; Dürer's prints spread Italian proportion theory north of the Alps.

Council of Trent (1563) rules on religious imagery, shaping later art: clarity, decorum, and didactic legibility in altarpieces.

Baroque drama: strong diagonals, extreme light-dark contrast (tenebrism), and open, asymmetrical compositions that pull the viewer into the scene.

Caravaggio's tenebrism uses a single raking light source against a dark ground; naturalistic, unidealised figures (Calling of St Matthew).

Bernini's sculptural bel composto unites sculpture, architecture, and light (Cornaro Chapel, Ecstasy of Saint Teresa).

Italian Baroque ceiling painting uses quadratura illusion to open the vault upward (Pozzo, Sant'Ignazio; Cortona, Barberini ceiling).

Counter-Reformation church planning favours longitudinal nave, dramatic altar focus, and abundant gilding; the Gesù is the model.

Flemish and Dutch Baroque diverge: Rubens' energetic colour and large workshop vs. Rembrandt's psychological chiaroscuro and Dutch genre realism.

Spanish Baroque: naturalism plus religious intensity; Velázquez's Las Meninas layers pictorial space, self-portraiture, and court politics.

Rococo (c. 1730–1770): pastel palette, asymmetry, rocaille ornament, and playful erotic or pastoral themes; Watteau's fêtes galantes, Boucher.

Rococo interiors dissolve wall surfaces into ornament and mirror; German/Austrian examples include the Wieskirche and Vierzehnheiligen.

Neoclassicism: archaeological correctness, clear outlines, suppressed brushwork, moral subjects; David's Oath of the Horatii and Canova's sculpture.

Romanticism: emotion over reason, sublime nature, dramatic colour and atmosphere; Géricault, Delacroix, Friedrich, Turner, Constable.

Realism (mid-century): ordinary labour and contemporary life, unidealised; Courbet's Stone Breakers and Burial at Ornans, Millet's Gleaners.

Impressionism (1874 onward): plein-air painting, broken colour, visible brushwork, and modern urban leisure; Monet, Renoir, Degas, Morisot.

Impressionist technique relies on new materials: collapsible metal paint tubes, synthetic pigments (cobalt blue, chrome yellow), and portable easels.

Post-Impressionism: Seurat's pointillism (scientific divisionism), Cézanne's constructive planes, Van Gogh's expressive impasto, Gauguin's flat synthetic colour.

Photography's rise (daguerreotype 1839) reshapes painting's function; debates over realism, reproduction, and the camera's social documentation.

Architecture: iron and glass (Crystal Palace 1851, Eiffel Tower 1889) challenge historicist styles; Arts and Crafts reacts against industrial production.

Academic art and the Salon system: juried exhibitions, Prix de Rome, and the Salon des Refusés (1863) as a catalyst for avant-garde independence.

Fauvism (1905): non-naturalistic, saturated colour used structurally; Matisse and Derain. Cubism (1907–14) breaks form into facets and multiple viewpoints.

Picasso and Braque's Analytic Cubism is near-monochrome and fragmented; Synthetic Cubism introduces collage, papier collé, and clearer shapes.

Futurism (1909 manifesto): motion, simultaneity, and technology; Balla and Boccioni's dynamic lines and fragmented figures.

Dada (1916–): anti-art strategies, readymades (Duchamp's Fountain), photomontage, and chance procedures as critique of bourgeois culture.

Surrealism (1924 manifesto): automatism and dream imagery; Dalí's paranoiac-critical method, Ernst's frottage, Magritte's visual paradoxes.

Bauhaus (1919–33): integration of craft and industry, preliminary course (Vorkurs), functional typography, and modernist architecture.

Abstract Expressionism: Action Painting (Pollock's drip technique) and Colour Field (Rothko's stacked, luminous rectangles).

Pop Art (1950s–60s): mass-media imagery, screen printing, and banality; Warhol, Lichtenstein, Hamilton's 1956 collage.

Postmodern and contemporary practices: Minimalism's industrial materials, Conceptual art's primacy of idea, Land art, Performance, and Institutional Critique.

Fresco: pigment in water on wet lime plaster (buon fresco); lime carbonation binds pigment; dry retouching is fresco secco and less durable.

Tempera: pigment bound in egg yolk, fast-drying, applied in hatched layers over gesso; predates oil in panel painting.

Oil paint: pigment in drying oil (linseed, walnut); slow drying allows blending, glazing, and impasto; canvas replaced panel from the 16th century.

Glazing = transparent layers over opaque underpainting; scumbling = thin opaque layer over a darker ground; both modulate colour and depth.

Printmaking: relief (woodcut), intaglio (engraving, etching with acid, drypoint burr), planographic (lithography), and screen printing (stencil).

Sculpture methods: carving (subtractive, stone/wood), modelling (additive, clay/wax), casting (lost-wax bronze), and assemblage/construction.

Formal analysis vocabulary: line, shape, form, value, colour (hue, saturation, value), texture, space, scale, proportion, balance, rhythm, emphasis.

Mosaic: tesserae of stone, glass, or ceramic set in mortar; andamento describes the directional flow of the tesserae rows.

Architectural analysis: plan, section, elevation, structure (post-and-lintel, arch, vault, dome, truss), and the relation of form to function.