Exam 3 Chapter 12

Question 1

What does “renaissance” mean?

Answer 1

Renaissance means rebirth.

Question 2

How was this period similar to the classical age and how was it different?-

Answer 2

Different: they rejected the religious thought of the middle ages and to them the dark ages was the middle age because nothing creative happened since the fall of Rome. They sought to imitate the art of classical greece during the classical age.
Similar: was a rebirth of classical learning and a rediscovery of ancient rome. rebirth of creativity.

Question 3

Why is the notion that the Dark Ages ended with the Renaissance false?

Answer 3

It didn’t end because culture didn’t just appear and that it was a gradual process. The renaissance made people a lot less concerned with religion. It helped shift art and culture to a more intellectual sphere

Question 4

Why did the Renaissance start in Florence?

Answer 4

No city its size exerted more influence on culture at large than this focus of banking and commerce. Patterned after ancient Athens.

Question 5

What were the Medici contributions to the Renaissance? (Cosimo, Piero, Lorenzo)

Answer 5

Cosimo was a banker and trader. They funded and sustained the artists. They were patrons.

Question 6

How does the concept of “artist” change?-

Answer 6

Characterized by human expressions, palpable space, credible anatomy, and psychological states. Gave perspective in art (eg: Holy Trinity by Masaccio)

Question 7

Describe Renaissance architecture.

Answer 7

Had gothic and romanesque features, but focused emphasized symmetry, proportion and geometry

Question 8

Describe humanism.

Answer 8

A perspective that gives primary importance to the human being and not to divine or supreme being.

Question 9

How does the meaning of the word differ today from Renaissance times?

Answer 9

In the renaissance it meant someone trained in the humane letters of the ancient classics and employed to use those skills. More generally, one who studies the humanities as opposed to the sciences.

Question 10

What is Neo-Platonism?

Answer 10

Philosophical movement ultimately derived from the work of plato and his followers, which emphasized the drive toward the ideal as the goal of transcending mere material reality

Question 11

Know the themes and be able to recognize excerpts from Machiavelli’s The Prince, and Lorenzo Medici’s “Song of Bacchus”(pp.291-2).

Answer 11

The Prince: Theories on government practice: How to make alliances, how to handle insurrection, how to on political and military strategy. Very literal book. Themes: “The best decision isnt always the most ethical one” and “let the ends justify the means”. First western thinker to describe Scientific Method??
Song of Bacchus: Theme- “Tomorrow holds no certainty”. Enjoy youth and life and love

Question 12

Renaissance

Answer 12

Derived from the Latin word for “rebirth”. A revival of learning and artistic creativity in Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries.

Question 13

Studia Humanitatis

Answer 13

Latin for “schools”, 15th cent. Institutions throughout Italy where scholars taught and wrote, focusing on humanist topics such as history, literature, ethics, language, etc.

Question 14

Neo-Platonism

Answer 14

Philosophical movement derived from the work of Plato and his followers, which emphasizes the drive toward the ideal as the goal of transcending mere material reality

Question 15

Perspective

Answer 15

The technique used to represent a three-dimensional world (what we see) on a two-dimensional surface (a piece of paper or canvas) in a way that looks realistic and accurate, as we see it in nature.

Question 16

Linear Perspective

Answer 16

A system of organizing space in two-dimensional media in which lines that are in reality parallel and horizontal are represented as converging diagonals; the method is based on foreshortening, in which the space between the lines grows smaller until it disappears, just as objects appear to grow smaller as they become more distant.

Question 17

Radial Perspective

Answer 17

A type of perspective that demonstrates objects how we would see them with our own eyes, generally curved and rounded because our eye is rounded.
vanishing point- In linear perspective, a point on the horizon where parallel lines appear to converge.

Question 18

Foreshortening

Answer 18

A perspective technique used to convey the appearance of contraction of a figure or object as it recedes into space

Question 19

Chiaroscuro

Answer 19

A painting technique that employs extreme contrasts between light and darkness
sfumato-the technique of allowing tones and colors to shade gradually into one another, producing softened outlines or hazy forms.

Question 20

Oil

Answer 20

A paste made with ground pigment and a drying oil such as linseed oil.

Question 21

Fresco

Answer 21

Wall painting on moist plaster

Question 22

Tempera

Answer 22

From Latin tempere (to mix). A painting technique in which pigment is mixed with egg water

Question 23

Chronology:

Answer 23

Baptistry North Doors competition, Brunelleschi’s dome, Donatello David, Cosimo, van Eyck’s Arnolfini Wedding, Piero, Lorenzo, Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, Pico della Mirandola Oration, Savanarola, Pieta, Last Supper(1495), David(1501), Mona Lisa(1503), Machiavelli The Prince (1513)