Answering other questions about fourteenth- through sixteenth-century 2D art - AP Art History

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Question

Renaissance art made a dramatic departure from medieval art by __________.

Answer

During the Renaissance, with a renewed focus on classical art and scientific understanding, visual arts underwent a significant change. In particular, religious themes dwindled in importance in comparison to classical subjects, and deeper, more varied colors were used to represent more realistic depictions of the human form.

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Question

What figure from Greek mythology is prominently featured in Sandro Botticelli's most famous work?

Answer

Sandro Botticelli's The Birth of Venus is one of the signature paintings of Early Renaissance art from Italy, and as such deals with many themes prominent in the era. Botticelli chose the ancient goddess of love, appearing nude and fully formed from the ocean on a clam shell, instead of a Christian theme. Additionally, the picture's symbolism and color focus more on Platonic ideals than the Christian symbolism that was so prevalent in late Medieval art.

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Question

Renaissance painting was different from medieval painting for all of the following reasons EXCEPT __________.

Answer

The Renaissance saw an explosion in new forms of art, which explicitly sought a break from Medieval tradition. One of the chief features thematically was a revival in Classical subjects from ancient Greece and Rome. Renaissance artists also used new techniques and methods to create wider use of perspective and contrast in colors and light elements.

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Question

Oil Paint only became widespread in European art in the __________.

Answer

Oil paint, created by blending paint pigments with flaxseed or linseed oil, allows for deeper and richer colors, which can also be blended more easily into different colors. Oil painting replaced tempera paint, which was mixed with egg yolk, in Europe around the late fifteenth century, initially in the work of Early Netherlandish painters, like Jan van Eyck. Van Eyck's influence on the Italian Renaissance made oil painting the standard in European art by 1500.

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Question

The sixteenth-century German artist who wrote an influential work on human proportion was __________.

Answer

Albrecht Dürer was the most well-respected and influential German artist of the Early Renaissance period. A large portion of this influence stems from his impressive paintings and engravings; however, he also wrote two books of art theory, Four Books of Measurement and Four Books of Proportion, which were widely read by generations of artists.

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Question

Southern European nations are more likely to possess pre-Renaissance religious art because __________.

Answer

In Europe, the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation occurred essentially simultaneously, with a revolution in art taking place at the same time as an upheaval in religion. The religious turmoil often affected art made before the time period, however, because many Protestants were iconoclasts who sought to destroy all religious imagery, especially those of saints and other intermediaries.

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Question

Van Eyck - Arnolfini Portrait.jpg

Pictured above is the Arnolfini Portrait, and can be found at the Website of National Gallery, London.

The medium of the work is __________.

Answer

As is common in the Northern Renaissance tradition, Van Eyck takes advantage of the slow drying time of oil to get the level of detail he achieves.

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Question

Van Eyck - Arnolfini Portrait.jpg

Pictured above is the Arnolfini Portrait, and can be found at the Website of National Gallery, London.

The image depicts a __________.

Answer

The figures are arranged in a standard pose of a newly-married couple, and the poses of each as well as the adornment on the woman's head suggest they are wed.

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Question

Van Eyck - Arnolfini Portrait.jpg

Pictured above is the Arnolfini Portrait, and can be found at the Website of National Gallery, London.

The house in which the couple resides is located in __________.

Answer

The painting is of Netherlandish Renaissance style and was painted by Jan van Eyck, who is from the Netherlands.

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Question

Van Eyck - Arnolfini Portrait.jpg

Pictured above is the Arnolfini Portrait, and can be found at the Website of National Gallery, London.

The work depicts all of the following except __________.

Answer

Jan van Eyck signed his painting above the mirror. As well, the placement of the wife near the bed suggests submission to the power of the man, while the stiff pose and dress is tradition for the time. There is nothing religious, though, about the painting.

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Question

Van Eyck - Arnolfini Portrait.jpg

Pictured above is the Arnolfini Portrait, and can be found at the Website of National Gallery, London.

The painting reflects van Eyck's interest in __________.

Answer

This painting represents a tradition of Netherlandish weddings, and it reflects the traditions of that society.

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Question

Van Eyck - Arnolfini Portrait.jpg

Pictured above is the Arnolfini Portrait, and can be found at the Website of National Gallery, London.

The painting's audience was likely __________.

Answer

The painting was commissioned by Giovanni Arnolfini for the purpose of private viewing in his house.

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Question

Van Eyck - Arnolfini Portrait.jpg

Pictured above is the Arnolfini Portrait, and can be found at the Website of National Gallery, London.

The painting displays symbols of __________.

Answer

Both figures are richly dressed, adorned with the latest fashions of the time, which is very much a symbol of wealth and status. While it is a marriage portrait, love has little enough to do with marriage in the Northern Europe of the fifteenth century.

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Question

Van Eyck - Arnolfini Portrait.jpg

Pictured above is the Arnolfini Portrait, and can be found at the Website of National Gallery, London.

The function of the painting is to __________.

Answer

The work depicts a newlywed couple, and it is meant to honor their marriage through artistic depiction.

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Question

All of the following statements about European humanism and its influence on visual art of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries are true except _____________.

Answer

While Plato's _Republic_is a work of literature from Classical Antiquity, it is not so largely influential on the overall movement of Renaissance Humanism in literature and in art to be accurately described as the philosophical system at Humanism's core. Humanism was too broad a movement to have its fundamental basis attributed to any one work.

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Question

The fifteenth century invention of the printing press with moveable type saw which of the following developments in the visual arts?

Answer

The invention of the printing press gave way to an explosion in the manufacturing of books, many of which required illustrations to accompany the written word. This allowed for great expansion in the arts of printmaking and greatly increased the popularity of the medium, with its methods such relief (woodblock) printing, intaglio, etc.

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Question

Near the end of the Italian High Renaissance, a unique artistic style emerged. It focused on asymmetry, unnatural elongation or exaggeration of human characteristics, and tension within the composition. Although this style lasted less than a century in Italy, its adoption in other, more northern European countries lasted well into the seventeenth century.

What artistic style is the above paragraph describing?

Answer

Mannerism lasted in Italy from the 1520s until the 1580s, but was practiced for a much longer amount of time in European countries north of Italy. Mannerist paintings portray subjects with purposefully elongated proportions and stylized poses. It was a step away from the harmonious, symmetrical, and rational subjects of Renaissance art.

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Question

It has been speculated that the Bubonic Plague, also known as the Black Death, which occurred during the mid-14th century and claimed the lives of 30% to 60% of Europeans, sparked which artistic and scientific movement in its aftermath?

Answer

It is speculated that in the aftermath of the Bubonic Plague, the citizens of Europe, and especially Italy, which was particularly devastated by the Plageu, began to think of life, spirituality, art, science, and the afterlife in a new way. This particularly traumatic event caused a social and economic upheaval in many parts of Europe, which changed the way of life and opportunities of many citizens.

These social, economic, religious and scientific changes in European culture may have sparked what is now known as the Renaissance.

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Question

Robert campin   triptych with the annunciation  known as the  merode altarpiece    google art project

A work of art such as the Annunciation Triptych by the Workshop of Robert Campin was traditionally displayed __________________.

Answer

The Annunciation Triptych, also known as the Mérode Altarpiece, is typical of a late medieval, early renaissance religious work of art that was designed to fit across the altar in a church. Usually paid for and commissioned by the civic leaders, such a work of art both held religious significance and demonstrated the wealth and prestige of the city. Robert Campin, and his Workshop, would have created the piece both as a matter of artistic skill and to show religious meaning.

Image is in the public domain, accessed through Wikipedia Media Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Robert\_Campin\_-\_Triptych\_with\_the\_Annunciation,\_known\_as\_the\_%22Merode\_Altarpiece%22\_-\_Google\_Art\_Project.jpg

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Question

Robert campin   triptych with the annunciation  known as the  merode altarpiece    google art project

Based on the style of the work, it was created in _________________.

Answer

Two significant, but very separate, movements pushed European painting forward in the fifteenth century. One was the Italian Renaissance, which focused on new methods of perspective and light. By contrast, Early Netherlandish Painting, centered in Flanders and represented by the Annunciation Triptych, used traditional methods of representation and posing, but made technical innovations in color and drawing that created more sharply defined and exquisite paintings. While the two would begin to learn from each other by the sixteenth century, Northern and Southern Europe continued to have separate traditions and styles in painting.

Image is in the public domain, accessed through Wikipedia Media Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Robert\_Campin\_-\_Triptych\_with\_the\_Annunciation,\_known\_as\_the\_%22Merode\_Altarpiece%22\_-\_Google\_Art\_Project.jpg

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