PAU History of Art (Extremadura) flashcards

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

Ziggurat

Stepped mud-brick platform topped by a temple, as at Ur. It functioned as a religious and administrative center and as a symbolic axis between earth and sky.

Contrapposto

Weight resting on one leg so hips and shoulders tilt in opposition. It produces naturalistic torsion and defines Classical Greek figure composition from the Severe style onward.

Kouros

Archaic Greek standing nude male statue, frontal with left foot forward, braided hair, and Archaic smile. Serves as votive offering or grave marker before the Classical period.

Opus caementicium

Roman concrete of lime, volcanic ash, and aggregate. Its plasticity allowed vaults and domes such as the Pantheon's 43.3-meter span without interior supports.

Veristic portraiture

Roman Republican portrait style recording age, wrinkles, and individual flaws. It contrasts with imperial idealization and expresses gravitas and ancestral values.

Pendentive

Curved triangular transition between a square bay and a circular dome. It is the structural basis of Hagia Sophia's centralized Byzantine plan.

Iconoclasm

Byzantine movement (726–843) banning religious images. After its defeat, church decoration followed fixed programs placing Christ in the dome and the Virgin in the apse.

Historiated tympanum

Semicircular carved panel above a Romanesque portal showing a narrative scene, usually the Last Judgment. It organizes the faithful's entry into the church.

Flying buttress

External arched support transmitting vault thrust to a pier. Combined with pointed arches and rib vaults, it defines Gothic structure and permits tall, thin walls.

Muqarnas

Three-dimensional Islamic stucco or plaster vaulting of stacked niche cells. It creates honeycomb surfaces in domes, portals, and cornices across al-Andalus and the Maghreb.

Sfumato

Leonardo's technique of soft, smoky transitions between tones with no visible outline. It produces atmospheric depth and psychological nuance, as in the Mona Lisa.

Figura serpentinata

Mannerist serpentine figure twisting along a spiral axis. It expresses grace and instability rather than Classical balance, as in Parmigianino and Bronzino.

Linear perspective

System using a vanishing point and horizon to construct illusionistic depth on a flat surface. Alberti codified it in De pictura (1435).

Plateresque

Spanish Renaissance façade style of intricate, silversmith-like ornament. It covers late Gothic structures with Italianate motifs and precedes Herrerian classicism.

Tenebrism

Extreme chiaroscuro with a dark ground and a single raking light source. Caravaggio used it to dramatize religious scenes and heighten psychological presence.

Rocaille

Asymmetric shell-and-scroll ornament giving Rococo its name. It frames mirrors, stucco panels, and furniture in pastel-toned, small-scale interiors.

Fête galante

Watteau's genre of elegant outdoor courtship scenes in parkland settings. It blends theatrical costume with lyric atmosphere and typifies French Rococo painting.

Las Meninas

Velázquez's 1656 court painting staging the artist, the infanta, and the royal reflection. It interrogates pictorial space, spectatorship, and the painter's status.

Neoclassicism

Late 18th-century style based on archaeological antiquity, outline drawing, and moralizing subjects. David and Ingres exemplify its clarity and idealization.

Impressionism

French movement from 1874 using broken color, optical mixture, and plein-air observation of modern leisure. Its first exhibition was held in Nadar's studio.

Pointillism

Seurat's technique of small dots of pure color intended to mix optically in the viewer's eye. It systematized Impressionist color theory into Divisionism.

Synthetism

Gauguin's approach combining flat color areas, bold outlines, and symbolic subject matter. It rejects optical realism in favor of expressive, decorative synthesis.

Japonisme

European interest in Japanese woodblock prints from the 1860s. Their flat color, cropped composition, and asymmetry reshaped Impressionist and Post-Impressionist design.

Analytic Cubism

Picasso and Braque's phase around 1908–1912 fracturing objects into overlapping facets. The palette is nearly monochrome to focus attention on form and multiple viewpoints.

Readymade

Duchamp's ordinary manufactured object presented as art, such as a bottle rack or urinal. It shifts artistic value from craft to selection and concept.

Automatism

Surrealist technique of drawing or writing without conscious control. Miró and Masson used it to access the unconscious and generate biomorphic forms.

Action painting

Abstract Expressionist method of applying paint through gesture, drip, and sweep. Pollock's floor-based webs record physical movement rather than depict an object.

El Paso group

Spanish post-war avant-garde group founded in Madrid in 1957. Saura, Millares, and Tàpies used informalist matter painting to oppose Francoist cultural isolation.

Altamira

Cantabrian cave with Magdalenian polychrome bison painted in charcoal and ochre. Its ceiling uses natural rock contours to model animal volume.

Mudéjar

Christian architecture using Islamic techniques and ornament, such as brick, tile, and carved plaster. It is widespread in Extremaduran churches in Cáceres and Trujillo.

Luis de Morales

Extremaduran painter called El Divino (c. 1520–1586). His close-up devotional panels combine Flemish detail with Italianate modeling and intense emotional restraint.

Guadalupe Monastery

Hieronymite monastery in Cáceres province with Hispano-Flemish paintings and Zurbarán's sacristy cycle. UNESCO listed it in 1993 as a Spanish heritage site.