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Final paper summary

Anglo american university

SURVEY ON WESTERN ART

Ricardo Edwin Vazquez Villagomez

15/01/2022
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QUESTIONS - GLOSSARY

1- Question 2 – Romanesque Art . PAGE ( 5)

Demonstrate your understanding of this early Christian art style. Explain the main artistic features

in painting, sculpture, and architecture. Add a short description of the historical situation. Provide

one example of architecture which you describe for its main features.

2 - Question 3 – Gothic Art . PAGE ( 7)

Demonstrate your understanding of this Christian art style. Explain the main artistic features in

painting, sculpture, and architecture. Add a short description of the period in centuries, the three

parts of the Gothic style, and general historical situation. Provide one example of a Gothic

cathedral which you describe for its main features.

3- Question 8 – High Renaissance in Italy, 16th century. PAGE ( 9)

Leonardo da Vinci – How would you describe his contribution to the best of the Western Art?

What made him a Humanist? Focus on the sfumato style of Mona Lisa, the composition, and the

use of perspective in the fresco of the Last supper, and briefly on his scientific inventions.

4 - Question 9 – High Renaissance in Italy, 16th century. PAGE ( 11-12)

Michelangelo – Describe his artistic genius and the best of his work: focus on the Sistine chapel

and the statue of David. Describe the style of both monuments and explain how Michelangelo

drew inspiration from the Antiquity. How did he predestined the style of mannerism and baroque

in his later work? Could you give an example?

5 - Question 10 – High Renaissance in Northern Europe, 16th century . PAGE ( 14)

Describe the style of painting of Pieter Brueghel, the elder. Focus on two paintings, the

Landscape with the fall of Ikaros and Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap. Demonstrate on them

how Brueghel used moralizing themes.

6 - Question 13 – Modern art. PAGE ( 16)

Select one representative piece of art from the period from the second half of the 19th

century to contemporary art. Tell the reader why you selected that example. Identify the art

style and period. Add some meaningful description of how the selected example fits to the

historical period which it represents. Talk briefly also about the meaning of the selected piece and

its impact on the modern art development.

7 - GUIDE. WORKS CITED. PAGE ( 17 -18)

Romanesque art, architecture, sculpture, and painting characteristic of the first of two great

artistic eras that flourished in Europe during the Middle Ages. Romanesque architecture emerged
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about 1000 a.c and lasted until about 1150 a.c, by which time it had evolved into Gothic style.

The Romanesque was at its height in 1075 and 1125 in France, Italy, Britain, and Germany . It

was the first European style since the Imperial Roman architecture .You can find examples of

this through all Europe. The name Romanesque refers to the fusion of Roman, Carolingian and

Ottonian, Byzantine, and local Germanic traditions that make up the mature style. Although

perhaps the most striking advances in Romanesque art were made in France, the style was

current in all parts of Europe except those areas in eastern Europe that preserved a full-fledged

Byzantine tradition. Most Romanesque sculpture is Pictorial and biblical in subject.A great

variety of themes are found in building capitals, including scenes of Creation and the Fall of

Man, the life of Christ, and the Old Testament. Carved wooden images were a fundamental

element in churches as objects of worship. The First Romanesque style, also known as Lombard

Romanesque style, is characterized by thick walls, lack of sculpture, and the presence of

rhythmic ornamental arches known as Lombard bands. The difference between the First

Romanesque and later Romanesque styles is a matter of the expertise with which the buildings

were constructed. First Romanesque employed rubble walls, smaller windows, and unvaulted

roofs, while the Romanesque style is distinguished by a more refined style and increased use of

the vault and dressed stone. For example, Monastery of Santa Maria de Ripoll in 1032 mirroring

the First Romanesque characteristics of two frontal towers, a cruise with seven apses , and

Lombard ornamentation of blind arches and vertical strips.

The transition from romanesque into gothic was quite slowly, this can been seen in the paintings,

it was not drastic the change but instead peaceful and slow, one of the main features of the gothic

style on painting is the use of extreme chiaroscuro and foreshortening, in addition the level of

detail in gothic ornamental detailing rather than a dramatic difference in style of figures and

compositions an example of this, is the Trebon Altarpiece. The sculpture main features are the

Gilt which consists in a thin layer of gold, Sacred and romantique, although is really hard to say

weather or not an sculpture is gothic, but rather gothic in this case will not be a style for it will

offer a mood or a descriptive feeling to whatever sculpture is been admire. Gothic architecture on

the other hand is really noticeable and followed by strong tendencies that are seen through all the

period. The style was influenced by Romanesque, Byzantine and Middle Eastern architecture,

the structures like pointed arches, flying buttresses, vaulted ceilings, and large stained windows,

the gargoyles, ornate decorations. Gothic is divided into three periods, Early Gothic, High

Gothic, and Late Gothic, The combination of many other styles helped gothic to emerge as a new

style among the artists, sculptures, architects, wiritters, even among the culture, the movement

began in Ile de France, and one of the first great examples of gothic architecture is Abbey of

Saint Denis in Paris. The best example of Gothic architecture till our days, is the cathedral of

Notre Dame in Paris, it captures the essence of the style, but also the evolution of Gothic

Architecture
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Leonardo Da Vinci was born in Anchiano Italy on April 15, 1452 and died in Château du Clos

Lucé Amboise, France on May 2nd, 1519. The major influences that Leornado had in Western

Art contributions are the study of anatomy, which was never explored in such depth as leonardo

did, although is known that leonardo methods were highly unorthodox by the time causing him

trouble for this, however, now days one of the first anatomy studies in medicine and other

disciplines such as biology, architecture come from the writing and studies in art of Leonardo Da

Vinci, also one of the biggest contributions that Leonardo give was not necessarily just

knowledge but his own work, an example of this are the Mona Lisa, The last Supper, Salvator

Mundi. Leonardo Da Vinci was considered to be a Humanist for his early research in human

nature and its beauty, and the wonders that surrounded him, an example of this are the studies in

nature, another reason why Leonardo was a Humanist was his philosophy affiliations that can be

track back on his books, where Leonardo expresses the value of human dignity and education

through various disciplines, and how knowledge is the vehicle to feed his soul, in addition he let

see this in his painting style. According to curators, all portraits depend afterwards in the style of

the Mona Lisa, the sfumato style use in this painting is the masterful technique of Da Vinci that

developed through his years, sfumato means evaporated or vanished, that it can been seen on

theMona Lisa transitions between the light and shade, blending perfectly colors, and borders as

smoke. The last supper perspective, it is a linear perspective that is achieved by converging a

single vanishing point on the horizon line from the composition.

One of the most famous sculptors, artists, poets, painters and architects of all time -

Michelangelo Buonarotti was born on 03/06/1475 in the city of Caprese, where he studied in

primary school, and upon graduation, in 1488, began to study sculpture, being a student of

Bertoldo in the studio of the greatest painter History - Domenico Ghirlandaio. Lorenzo Medici

was fascinated by the boy's talent, so he took him into his house and financially helped

Michelangelo develop. When Lorenzo died, Buonarotti went to Bologna, where he erected a

marble angel with a candelabra, as well as a statue for the church of St. Petronius. In 1494 he

returned to Florence again. A new period of his work began, in which he boldly exaggerated the

forms of nature in order to express his ideas and better convey the characters. Michelangelo

created the famous statue of David from a piece of white marble that was left over from another

sculptor. The valuable stone passed into other hands only because the previous owner was unable

to complete the work from this piece, after which he abandoned it. The lines of the body are

anatomically perfect, a relaxed posture indicates confidence and strength, a sling thrown over the

left shoulder promises a deadly attack to the enemy. The sculptural image of the Jewish king was

commissioned by Michelangelo in 1501 by the guild of wool merchants. It was this association

that was responsible for decorating the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore (La Cattedrale di

Santa Maria del Fiore). Florence was rightly proud of the temple, its worthy decoration was a

matter of honor for the shop foreman. The statue was to become part of a sculptural ensemble

consisting of twelve characters from the Old Testament. This was not destined to come true. The

most popular story associated with these frescoes is, of course, the anatomical depiction of the

brain in the story of the creation of Adam. The outlines of the tissues around God resemble the

outline of the human brain, and the positions of the bodies of his companions are similar to its
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different departments. Meanwhile, this is generally one of the first images of the Almighty in the

form of a bearded man soaring in the clouds.

Born in the Netherlands in the 1520s, his work focuses on themes such as rural working life,

religion and superstition, and the political and social intrigues of his day. A number of Bruegel's

paintings depict the lives of Flemish commoners, earning him the moniker "peasant Bruegel" and

the mistaken reputation of being of peasant birth. Bruegel’s use of landscape also defies easy

interpretation, and demonstrates the artist’s greatest innovation. Working in the aftermath of the

Reformation, Bruegel was able to separate his landscapes from long-standing iconographic

tradition, and achieve a contemporary and palpable vision of the natural world. The Landscape

with the Fall of Icarus is a true masterpiece. However, it is disguised in mystery, and leaves a lot

of questions unanswered. today, particularly regarding its attribution. The painting, therefore,

continues to exert an enduring fascination. However, the composition is so brilliant that

numerous curators identify it as one of the famous painter’s works. This painting, featuring a

subject from Greek mythology, depicts the hero described by Ovid in his Metamorphoses In the

composition itself, the presence of the mythical hero is in the details; only the legs of Icarus

himself can be seen in the air. In the bottom right-hand corner of the painting, Icarus, surrounded

by a fine spray of water, has just fallen into the water. Around him, the rest of the world remains

calm, as if unbothered by his disease. The work "Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap and

Skaters" became the most famous in Brussels. The work reveals the most important features of

Pieter Bruegel the Elder's revolution in landscape painting. The painting is based on a view of a

real place, which is thought to be the Brabant village of Fed Saint Anne near Diben. The

inhabitants of this snow-covered village are real people living in a real corner of nature. The

artist depicts the winter countryside.

The son of Man by the surrealist Rene Magritte 1964. This painting is one of the most famous

painting in the surrealist style created by Andre breton, the picture is a self portrait of the artist

and it consist in a man with a coat, and an apple covering his face, which in the surrealism will

be the representation of the unconscious mind, where the apple is the cover to the inner self or

true self hiding the true nature of the man, another interpretation is the first sin interpreted in

another context where the man give a way its soul for knowledge, there is an interest in which is

hidden and which the visible does not show us taking a an intense feeling over a conflict after all

everything is hidden another thing. This painting was not intended to belong to the surrealism

but Rene, inspired by Van Gogh and other styles, ended doing one of the most remarkable

practices from the surrealism: the automatism,the action of not thinking while creating. This

painting has influenced the 21 century artist, musicians and even new philosophers, one

notorious artist is Andy Warwhol, or the legendary rock band Nirvana. The painting was painted

with oil, and the scale of The son of Man is 89 cm by 116 cm, in addition using a central

composition, where the artist used bright color and dark colors to create harmony making the

picture seem flat but this adds to the message intended by the artist.
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Guide.

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“'LANDSCAPE WITH THE FALL OF ICARUS' - Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium —

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https://theleonardo.org/leonardo-da-vinci-humanist-work/. Accessed 15 January 2022.

Magritte, Rene. “The Son of Man by Rene Magritte.” Rene Magritte,

https://www.rene-magritte.com/son-of-man/. Accessed 15 January 2022.

Mutuli, Ian. “Gothic Architecture History, Characteristics and Examples.” Archute,

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