Galicia PAU History of Art key terms

The enclosed inner room of a Greek or Roman temple that houses the cult statue; in Greek temples it is usually preceded by a pronaos porch and surrounded by the peristyle of columns.

A continuous row of columns running around the exterior of a building or enclosing a courtyard. In Greek temples it frames the cella on all four sides, creating a colonnade the visitor can walk behind.

The horizontal upper structure resting on columns, made up of architrave, frieze and cornice. Its proportions and ornament differ between the Doric, Ionic and Corinthian orders and help identify a building's style.

A pose in which the body's weight rests on one leg, so the hips and shoulders tilt in opposite directions and the torso curves. Introduced in Greek sculpture around 480 BC, it replaced the rigid frontal stance of Archaic figures.

A technique that depicts a form receding into depth by shortening its apparent length, so an arm pointing at the viewer looks compressed. It is a basic tool of illusionistic painting and relief sculpture from antiquity onward.

A Roman decorative technique in which pieces of coloured marble or stone are cut to shape and fitted together to form geometric or figured panels used on walls and floors, unlike mosaic, which uses small uniform tesserae.

A small cube of stone, glass or ceramic used to build up a mosaic. Tesserae of different colours and sizes are set in mortar to create images, and their density determines the fineness of detail possible.

A long rectangular building with a central nave flanked by lower aisles and lit by clerestory windows. Used in Roman civic life for law courts, it was adopted by Early Christians as the standard plan for churches.

The central, usually tallest aisle of a church, running from the entrance to the apse or choir and used by the congregation. It is often separated from side aisles by arcades or colonnades.

The semicircular area enclosed by the lintel and the arch above a doorway, especially in Romanesque and Gothic portals. It usually carries relief sculpture of the Last Judgement or other doctrinal subjects.

The study of the subjects, symbols and attributes depicted in a work of art, and of the conventions by which they are recognised, such as a key identifying Saint Peter or a lily signalling purity.

A screen of icons and painted panels separating the sanctuary from the nave in Byzantine and Orthodox churches. Its fixed arrangement of images expresses the boundary between the earthly and the divine.

An image or surface decoration made by embedding small pieces of coloured stone, glass or ceramic in mortar. Widely used in Roman floors and Early Christian and Byzantine church interiors to give durable, glowing colour.

A vault whose surface is divided by raised diagonal ribs of stone that carry the weight to the supporting piers. Its use from the 12th century allowed lighter, higher and more flexible church roofs than the barrel vault.

An external arched support that carries the outward thrust of a high vault across open space to a heavy pier. Combined with rib vaults, it let Gothic builders raise walls pierced by large windows.

Coloured glass cut into pieces, joined with lead strips and set in window openings to form figures or patterns. In Gothic churches it filtered light into coloured images that taught doctrine to the congregation.

A large circular window with radiating stone tracery, typical of Gothic church façades, filled with stained glass. Its geometric spokes often frame a central figure such as Christ or the Virgin.

A system that creates the illusion of depth on a flat surface by making parallel lines converge at one or more vanishing points on a horizon line. Codified in 15th-century Florence, it became central to Renaissance painting.

The modelling of form through strong contrasts of light and shade, used to suggest volume and space. In Leonardo and later Mannerist and Baroque painting it also carries mood and dramatic emphasis.

A technique of blending tones so softly that outlines dissolve into a hazy, smoky transition, as in Leonardo's faces. It softens contours to suggest atmosphere and the subtle modelling of flesh.

The Italian term for drawing, and by extension the intellectual design or concept behind a work. Renaissance and Mannerist theorists ranked it above colour (colorito) as the mark of the artist's judgement.

A style current roughly 1520-1600 that prized elegance, elongated proportions, twisted poses and artificial colour over Renaissance harmony and naturalism. Its sophistication and distortion express tension between ideal and observation.

An extreme form of chiaroscuro in which figures emerge from near-total darkness lit by a single strong source. Associated with Caravaggio and his followers, it intensifies drama and psychological focus.

A painting or decoration designed to deceive the eye into taking a flat surface for real three-dimensional space or objects, often used on ceilings and walls in Baroque and Rococo interiors.

The asymmetrical shell-and-scroll ornament that gave its name to the Rococo style. Curving, playful and often gilded, it covers wall panels, furniture and frames in 18th-century interiors.

A late 18th- and early 19th-century movement that revived the forms and subjects of Greek and Roman art, valuing clarity, restraint and moral seriousness. It reacted against Rococo frivolity and was fuelled by archaeological discoveries.

An early 19th-century movement that emphasised emotion, imagination, individual experience and the sublime power of nature, often through dramatic colour, turbulent composition and exotic or historical subjects.

A mid-19th-century approach that depicted ordinary contemporary life, labour and social conditions without idealisation, using unremarkable subjects and direct observation rather than historical or mythological themes.

A French movement from the 1870s that painted outdoor light and fleeting moments with broken, visible brushstrokes and bright colour, often working quickly to capture atmosphere before it changed.

A technique of applying small dots of pure colour that blend optically when seen from a distance, rather than being mixed on the palette. Practised by Seurat and Signac as a systematic extension of Impressionist colour.

A loose label for artists working after Impressionism, roughly 1886-1905, who pushed its colour and brushwork toward structure, symbolism or expressive distortion, as in Cézanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin.

An early 20th-century movement, led by Picasso and Braque, that broke objects into facets and showed several viewpoints at once, rejecting single-point perspective and often using muted, near-monochrome palettes.

A work made by gluing paper, newsprint, fabric or other found materials onto a surface. Introduced by Cubists around 1912, it blurred the line between painting and everyday printed matter.

An ordinary manufactured object, such as a bottle rack or urinal, selected and presented as art by the artist. Duchamp's readymades challenged the idea that art requires skilled making or beauty.

A post-1945 American movement of large-scale, non-representational painting, ranging from gestural dripping and sweeping brushwork to fields of colour, that stressed the act of painting and personal expression.

A movement of the 1950s and 1960s that took imagery from advertising, comics, packaging and celebrities, using bold colour, repetition and commercial printing techniques to question high art and mass culture.

An artwork that occupies a whole room or site, arranging objects, light, sound or media so the viewer walks through and experiences it rather than looking at a single framed object.

Painting on wet lime plaster, so pigments bind chemically into the wall as it dries and become permanent. It demands rapid work in sections and was a principal medium of Italian wall painting.

A paint in which pigment is bound with an emulsion, traditionally egg yolk, drying quickly to a matte, durable surface. It dominated panel painting before oil became widespread in the 15th century.

An aesthetic quality of overwhelming grandeur or terror, as in vast mountains or storms, that exceeds the beautiful and stirs awe. Central to 18th- and 19th-century landscape painting and theory.