Basque PAU History Of Art study materials
Basque PAU History Of Art study resources

Basque PAU History Of Art cheat sheet

Basque PAU History Of Art · Keep the key ideas within reach.

Quick reference

Ancient and Classical Art: Near East, Greece and Rome

  • Doric/Ionic/Corinthian orders must be described by capital, base and frieze, not just by 'style'.

  • Parthenon optical corrections: entasis, curved stylobate, thicker corner columns.

  • Polykleitos: contrapposto plus head-based canon; Roman copies of lost bronze originals.

  • Roman revolution = arch + vault + opus caementicium, enabling the Pantheon's 43 m dome.

  • Hellenistic markers: torsion, pathos, viewer invasion, multi-figure groups.

Quick reference

Medieval Art: Early Christian, Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic and Islamic

  • Early Christian basilica = atrium, narthex, nave, aisles, apse, transept, timber roof.

  • Hagia Sophia: pendentives carry the dome; 532-537, Anthemius and Isidore.

  • Pilgrimage plan: ambulatory plus radiating chapels for relic circulation.

  • Gothic system: pointed arch + rib vault + flying buttress = glazed walls.

  • Mosque vocabulary: qibla, mihrab, minbar, minaret, maqsura, muqarnas.

Quick reference

Renaissance and Mannerism

  • Brunelleschi dome 1420-1436: double shell, herringbone brick, no centring.

  • Alberti 1435 codifies one-point perspective as painting's 'window'.

  • Leonardo sfumato vs chiaroscuro: soft tonal modelling, not hard light-dark contrast.

  • Mannerism markers: figura serpentinata, elongation, acid colour, ambiguous space.

  • Venetian colorito vs Florentine disegno structures the Cinquecento comparison.

Quick reference

Baroque and Rococo

  • Tenebrism = darkness with a single raking light source; Caravaggio's signature device.

  • Bernini's bel composto: architecture + sculpture + painting + real light as one theatre.

  • Borromini: geometric plans, undulating facades, Sant'Ivo and San Carlo.

  • Poussinistes defend disegno; rubenistes defend colour - the French Academy split.

  • Rococo: asymmetry, rocaille, pastel, fete galante, private aristocratic interiors.

Quick reference

Nineteenth-Century Art: Neoclassicism to Post-Impressionism

  • Neoclassicism: firm contour, moral example, antique sources - David and Canova.

  • Romanticism: sublime, colour, individual drama - Gericault, Delacroix, Turner, Friedrich.

  • Realism: Courbet's 1855 Pavilion, ordinary subjects at history-painting scale.

  • Impressionism named after Monet's 1872 canvas, shown in 1874 at Nadar's studio.

  • Post-Impressionism: Cezanne's structure, Van Gogh's colour, Gauguin's synthetism, Seurat's dots.

Quick reference

Twentieth-Century Art: Avant-Gardes and Later Movements

  • Fauvism 1905: colour autonomous from local tone; Salon d'Automne label.

  • Cubism: analytic facets 1908-1911, synthetic collage and papier colle 1912-1914.

  • Dada (Zurich 1916) attacks art itself; Surrealism (1924) explores the unconscious.

  • Guernica 1937: monochrome, Cubist space, victims only, anti-war meaning.

  • Modern architecture: Le Corbusier's five points, Mies, Wright; Pop and Conceptual after 1945.

Quick reference

Spanish and Andalusian Art: Al-Andalus, the Golden Age and Modernity

  • Mezquita: hypostyle hall, reused columns, double-tier horseshoe arches

  • Al-Hakam II mihrab with Byzantine mosaics; aniconic decoration

  • Alhambra: muqarnas, stucco, water and the Court of the Lions

  • Mudejar = Islamic techniques for Christian patrons, not Islamic art

  • Velázquez: Seville naturalism to Madrid court complexity

  • Goya's phases; Picasso, Gris, Dalí and Miró as modern continuity

Quick reference

Art Historical Method: Formal Analysis, Iconography, Technique, Context and Terminology

  • Formal elements: line, color, space, composition, light, viewpoint

  • Describe, then analyze; avoid unexplained evaluative words

  • Panofsky's three levels: pre-iconographic, iconographic, iconological

  • Technique constrains style: fresco, tempera, oil, mosaic, print

  • Context: patron, function, original location, audience

  • Use precise terms such as contrapposto, tenebrism, pendentive, muqarnas