Renaissance to Contemporary Architecture - AP Art History

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Question

The Italian architect and theorist Palladio was instrumental in developing the architectural style known as __________.

Answer

Palladio lived and worked around Venice in the mid-sixteenth century, constructing a series of large villas and important buildings. Much of Palladio's work harkened back to styles prominent in Ancient rome, as he created buildings with lots of columns, large colonnades, and domes. His influential architectural textbook, The Four Books of Architecture, helped spread these ideas in the architectural movement known as neo-classicalism.

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Question

White stone, columns, and marble are distinctive features of which architectural style?

Answer

In the enlightenment era of the eighteenth century, many artists and architects looked to classical Greece and Rome as models, spawning the architectural style known as "Neo-Classicism." Featuring white stone, columns, and extensive use of marble, this style is most famous as being used in many of America's government buildings.

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Question

Neoclassical architecture sought to revive the style of architecture prevalent in __________.

Answer

Neoclassical art and architecture came about in Europe hand in hand with the philosophical era known as the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century. Just as the Enlightenment reacted against Catholic Christianity and embraced reason over emotion, Neoclassical artists sought to go back to antiquity, to a "pre-Christian" era. Thus, Neoclassical architecture brought back the chief elements of Roman architecture, like columns, domes, and collonades.

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Question

The Chrysler Building is a chief example of what artistic movement?

Answer

The Chrysler Building in midtown Manhattan was the tallest building in the world for eleven months, spanning from its completion in May of 1930 to the completion of the Empire State Building. Apart from sheer size, the Chrysler building was also notable as a shining example of Art Deco design. The building's brick artifice, metal crown, and use of modern technological design all were exactly in line with Art Deco's chief features.

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Question

The architect who was most important in the development of the geodesic dome was __________.

Answer

A geodesic dome is a dome that features small triangle shapes over its face, which are created through the intersection of circles throughout what would be the total sphere. These triangles allow for the stress of the building's weight to be distributed over its entire structure, which allowed larger domes to be built in the twentieth century. The innovative architect Buckminster Fuller first demonstrated the architecture was possible, actively sought out opportunities to build domes, and coined the term "geodesic dome."

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Question

Who was the Renaissance architect whose guidebook and personal neoclassical style was widely influential during the Enlightenment?

Answer

The Italian architect Andrea Palladio was well known for his own buildings in his native Venice, but gained greater fame for the work of architectural theory he composed in 1570, The Four Books of Architecture. Drawing on Greek and Roman influences, Palladio called for symmetry, domes, columns, and grand spaces. Each of these elements would become hallmarks of neoclassical architecture during the eighteenth century.

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Question

A key difference between churches built after the Protestant Reformation and those before the Protestant Reformation in Protestant areas is that __________.

Answer

Protestant theology greatly changed church architecture in Northern Europe after the sixteenth century. Catholic churches, even for the tiniest, poorest parishes, featured ornate statuary and imagery before the Reformation. The Protestant-built churches, by contrast, were much less ornate, featuring fewer images, with altars creating less of a barrier between clergy and congregants.

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Question

The particular innovation that allowed large-scale skyscrapers to be built was __________.

Answer

Until the late nineteenth century, buildings had serious vertical size restrictions due to the weight placed on them by bricks and other traditional materials. With the introduction of steel, an alloy of iron, new possibilities were available to builders. In particular, the use of steel-frame construction, which built a "sheet" around steel beams, allowed for buildings stretching taller than ten stories.

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Question

The Washington Monument is a traditional memorial structure known as __________.

Answer

The Washington Monument, in the center of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., is the world's largest memorial obelisk. Obelisks, four sided pillars that originated with the ancient Egyptians, have long been used in Western culture as memorial markers. The Washington Monument was conceived in the 1840s as more than just the obelisk, but ran into funding problems and was only completed in its simpler form in 1885.

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Question

The Baroque artistic and architectural movement was superseded by a movement that developed in the early eighteenth century in Paris. What was the name of this movement?

Answer

The Baroque movement was superseded by the artistic and architectural movement Rococo in the eighteenth century. Rococo was a deviation from the grandeur and strict symmetry of the Baroque movement, which dominated western and central Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Some describe Rococo as delicate and intricate.

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Question

The neoclassical artistic movement of the eighteenth through the twenty-first centuries was inspired by which ancient civilization or civilizations?

Answer

Neoclassicism was inspired by both ancient Greek and ancient Roman civilizations. This can be seen in its use of columns and other characteristics commonly associated with Greek and Roman art and architecture. Neoclassical sculptures also greatly resemble ancient Greek and ancient Roman sculptures.

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Question

Monticello_2010-10-29.jpg

The building shown here was located __________________.

Answer

The main building of Monticello, pictured here, sat in the middle of Thomas Jefferson's plantation. As such, it was both a grand house and the administrative center for the plantation, which housed and worked hundreds of slaves in various agricultural projects. The building's remote location from other settlements was key to its size and situation in its surroundings.

Image accessed through Wikipedia Media Commons. Author: YF12. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Monticello\_2010-10-29.jpg

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Question

In designing the vacation home known as Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd Wright was heavily influenced by ___________________.

Answer

While Fallingwater is a thoroughly modern building, constructed in straight lines made out of concrete, glass, and steel, Frank Lloyd Wright was heavily inspired by Japanese architecture. Fallingwater was designed as a natural retreat for its owners, which meant Wright had to carefully blend the house into nature. Considering its use of natural light and a sense of blending the indoor and outdoor space, the house features many approaches which are borrowed from Japanese architectural ideas.

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Question

Le Corbusier's Five Points of Architecture are best captured in the building _____________________.

Answer

Le Corbusier was both a practicing architect and an architectural theorist. These two identities were best joined in his design and construction of Villa Savoye outside of Paris. The building intentionally and forcefully followed Le Corbusier's manifesto Five Points of Architecture. The five points Villa Savoye followed were having pilotis that lifted the building off the ground, a functional roof that could be used as a garden, a free floor plan without load bearing walls allowing interior openness, large windows that provided vast amounts of natural light, and freely designed facades that acted merely as a skin on the outside of the building.

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Question

Beaux-Arts architecture in the United States is defined by all of the following features EXCEPT __________.

Answer

"Beaux-Arts" takes its name from the national art school in France, but describes a separate movement among architects in the United States from roughly 1880 to 1920. The movement was defined by a sweeping neoclassicism that used Baroque motifs, featured a hierarchy of spaces (making grand entryways more important than living areas), added ornate elements like statues and vaultings, and usually employed flat roofs on buildings. The Beaux-Arts style was surpassed by Modernist architecture that valued clean lines and functionality over design details.

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Question

The Prairie School of Architecture is strongly associated with the American region of __________.

Answer

The Prairie School of Architecture developed in the Midwest in the 1890s as a reaction against the then-popular neo-Classicalism and Beaux-Arts styles. Prairie School Architects sought an authentically American style of architecture that reflected American landscapes. The term, "Prairie School," came about as a comment on the way the broad, plain style of architecture reflected the prairies of the Midwest.

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Question

Grand Central Terminal in New York City is representative of __________.

Answer

Beaux-arts architecture, named after France's national art school L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, featured grand structures embellished with baroque details and ornamentation. The Grand Central Terminal in New York was built in 1871 and refurbished in 1913, placing its construction at the height of the Beaux-Arts movement. As such, the railroad station's bronze statuary, ornate grand hall, and finer details make it a key example of the style.

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Question

The Palace of Westminster in London is a significant example of the architectural style known as __________.

Answer

In 1834, the Houses of Parliament burned down in the middle of London, which created the need for a new building to house the government of Great Britain. With rising Victorianism, the commission to build the new House of Parliament went to Charles Barry, who was an early proponent of the Neo-Gothic style. The style hearkened back to the dominant architectural style of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, which used grand features such as flying buttresses and ornate windows.

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Question

The English architect responsible for rebuilding many churches after the great London fire of 1666, including St. Paul's Cathedral, is __________.

Answer

The Great London Fire of 1666 destroyed many of the buildings in the city, including the original St. Paul's Cathedral, and necessitated massive architectural projects. The largest beneficiary of this was Sir Christopher Wren, a mathematician as well as an architect, who created over fifty churches and rebuilt St. Paul's. Wren's legacy found its way throughout baroque architecture, and his St. Paul's design influenced the Pantheon in Paris, the U.S. Capitol, and many other buildings.

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Question

300px-ingo_jones_plan_for_a_new_palace_at_whitehall_1638

The architect who created this plan began his career as __________.

Answer

When Inigo Jones, who created this plan of a new Palace at Whitehall in 1638, first became an architect, the field was only newly springing up as a separate artistic discipline. There was no training in architecture or building design, and many seventeenth-century architects were self-taught artisans who came from related fields. Jones began as a stage designer, where he built sets and costumes for shows at the English court, and was typical of his era of architects for starting off in an artistic field that required knowledge of structures and fabrication.

Image: Plan for A New Palace at Whitehall by Inigo Jones (1638). http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ingo\_Jones\_plan\_for\_a\_new\_palace\_at\_Whitehall\_1638.jpg

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