Matura History of Art study plan

Place 12 prehistoric and ancient Near Eastern/Egyptian monuments on a single timeline (Lascaux cave paintings, Venus of Willendorf, Stonehenge, Ziggurat of Ur, Stele of Hammurabi, Palette of Narmer, Step Pyramid of Djoser, Great Pyramid at Giza, Karnak hypostyle hall, bust of Nefertiti, Akhenaten colossus, Lamassu of Khorsabad) with dates accurate to within 300 years.

Identify and define the four representational conventions that separate prehistoric/ Egyptian art from later Greek art - hierarchical scale, registered ground lines, composite (twisted) view, and the Egyptian canon of proportions - and mark each on five works you sketch yourself from memory.

Explain the structural logic of post-and-lintel, corbel vault, and ashlar masonry in your own words, and name one monument per technique.

Distinguish Mesopotamian from Egyptian treatment of the ruler figure using three paired examples.

Order the Greek sequence from Geometric Kouros to Hellenistic Laocoön, naming one sculptor or workshop per phase and the formal shift each introduces (frontal stance, contrapposto, pathos).

Label the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders on a hand-drawn elevation, including entablature parts, and match each to one building (Parthenon, Erechtheion, Temple of Olympian Zeus).

Classify the Roman structural and typological repertoire - barrel vault, groin vault, dome, concrete, amphitheater, basilica, triumphal arch, insula - with a named example for each.

Contrast Greek idealizing portraiture with Roman veristic portraiture in three specific formal criteria (age markers, physiognomic detail, function/context).

Sequence the Renaissance from Early (Brunelleschi, Masaccio, Donatello) through High (Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael) to Mannerist (Pontormo, Parmigianino, Bronzino), giving three formal markers of the Mannerist break.

Analyze linear perspective and chiaroscuro as techniques: explain vanishing point, orthogonals, and tonal modeling, then apply the terms to two named paintings.

Compare Northern and Italian Renaissance handling of oil paint, detail, and religious narrative using Van Eyck and Masaccio as anchors.

Summarize the patronage shift from guild and civic commissions to papal and princely courts with two concrete commissions.

Distinguish Baroque from Renaissance by naming five formal criteria (diagonal composition, tenebrism, theatrical light, open form, emotional immediacy) and finding each in a Caravaggio, Bernini, or Rubens work.

Map Baroque regional variants - Italian, Flemish, Dutch, Spanish, French academic - onto one artist and one characteristic work per region.

Define Rococo as a distinct style (asymmetry, pastel palette, interior scale, gallant subject matter) and contrast it with Baroque with three concrete comparisons.

Explain tenebrism versus chiaroscuro precisely enough to correct a common exam confusion.

Outline the transition from catacomb painting to Early Christian basilica to Byzantine centralized plan, naming one monument per stage (Santa Maria Maggiore, San Vitale, Hagia Sophia).

Identify Byzantine conventions - gold ground, frontality, inverse perspective, hierarchy of scale, iconography of Christ Pantocrator - in three works and explain the Iconoclastic controversy's effect on image-making.

Compare Romanesque and Gothic structurally: barrel vault versus rib vault and flying buttress, thick versus skeletal wall, small versus large window area, using one church per style.

Decode Gothic portal sculpture and stained glass as programs: explain how tympanum, trumeau, and jamb figures deliver narrative and doctrine.

Place a 12-item medieval timeline covering 300–1400 with dates to the nearest half-century.

Order the nineteenth-century movements - Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Symbolism - with two artists and one defining formal trait per movement.

Explain how photography and industrial manufacture changed painting's function, citing two concrete consequences for composition or subject matter.

Define historicism and distinguish Neo-Gothic, Neo-Renaissance, and Neo-Baroque revival architecture with a named building for each.

Trace the shift from Salon academic finish to Impressionist facture by comparing brushwork and finish in two named works.

Explain Post-Impressionism as four divergent solutions (Seurat, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin), each with one formal aim.

Sequence the modernist succession - Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism, Dada, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop, Minimalism, Conceptual art - with dates and one defining strategy each.

Explain Cubism's analytical-to-synthetic shift and identify collage as its key technical innovation.

Interpret a readymade and a Conceptual work: state what each claims about authorship and the art object.

Describe three ways postwar art moved outside the gallery - performance, land art, video - with one example each.

Assess one twenty-first-century practice (digital, participatory, or installation) using the vocabulary built this week.

Consolidate all five domains into one master timeline of 60 works, ordered and dated, closing gaps flagged in earlier weekly quizzes.

Drill cross-period comparison: pair works from different domains and name the shared formal problem and the different solution.

Practice exam technique under time: complete a full timed mock at exam pace, then mark it strictly against a rubric you write yourself.

Convert every mock-exam miss into a corrective one-line fact card.