London Past Papers National Gallery Flashcards
What are the exact words – in English translation – of the Latin inscription on the wall in Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait?
Dated 1434, the Latin inscription Johannes de eyck fuit hic translates as: Johannes van Eyck was here, or simply: Jan van Eyck was here. The signature is a key to unlocking a prominent theme in the painting – the role of proxy, as being delegated to represent or act on behalf of another person in their absence.
What is the personal device of Richard II which appears on the Wilton Diptych?
Richard wears a brooch with his own badge of the white hart and a collar with the badge of broom-cods. Adopted by Richard II in 1396.
Which painting was commissioned by the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception of San Francesco, Milan in the late 15th century?
Leonardo da Vinci, ‘The Virgin of the Rocks’?
Where is the inscription CAROLUS REX MAGNAE BRITANNIAE in Van Dyck`s equestrian portrait of Charles l?
A tablet tied to a branch reads CAROLUS I REX MAGNAE BRITANIAE (Charles I King of Great Britain)
Why was the Wilton Diptych given this particular name?
The Wilton Diptych in the National Gallery takes its name from Wilton House, near Salisbury, Wiltshire, where it was housed between 1705 and 1929.
a) What is the name of the current Director of the National Gallery?
b) He was Deputy Director for Collections and Research of which Spanish museum?
a) Dr Gabriele Finaldi has been Director of the National Gallery since August 2015
b) Dr Finaldi was previously Deputy Director for Collections and Research at the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, a position he took up in 2002.
a) The Virgin of the Rocks was commissioned to adorn which church
b) in which city?
a) chapel of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary in the church of San Francesco Grande
b) Milan
The altarpiece was destined for the chapel of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary in the church of San Francesco Grande, the principal church of the Franciscan Order in Milan and the largest church in the city after the Cathedral.
Which horse did George Stubbs paint in 1762?
Whistlejacket
What was the name of the manor house Rubens bought in 1635?
Het Steen (lit. ‘The Stone’ or ‘The Rock’), also known as the Rubens Castle (Rubenskasteel), is a castle in Elewijt, Flemish Brabant in Belgium. It was owned by the artist Peter Paul Rubens between 1635 and his death in 1640 and the castle features in some of his landscape paintings.
Name the banker from whom the
first 38 paintings for the collection
were purchased.
When the Gallery was founded in 1824, the first 38 paintings came from the private art collection of the banker John Julius Angerstein.
May visitors use selfie sticks when taking photos?
Use of additional lighting or flash, tripods, and selfie sticks is not permitted
Name the artist who painted the equestrian portrait of King Charles I.
Anthony van Dyck, ‘Equestrian Portrait of Charles I’, about 1638–9
Name the old warship in Turner’s painting, which played a distinguished part in Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar.
Turner, The Fighting Temeraire, 1839
Name ONE of the three saints shown in the Wilton Diptych.
On the interior of the diptych Richard is presented to the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child by three saints. They are identified by their attributes: St John the Baptist holds the lamb, St Edward the Confessor a ring, and St Edmund, king and martyr, an arrow.
The painting ‘The Virgin with the
Infant Saint John the Baptist adoring
the Christ Child accompanied by an
Angel’ is more usually known as?
‘The Virgin of the Rocks’, Leonardo da Vinci
How many shops are located in the gallery?
There are three shops within the National Gallery, open daily from 10am to 5.45pm (Fridays until 8.45pm) and the online shop
Which painting was slashed in 1914
by suffragette Mary Richardson?
At the National Gallery on 10th March 1914 the painting known as the ‘Rokeby Venus’ was slashed by Mary Richardson.
Also known as; The Toilet of Venus, Venus at her Mirror, Venus and Cupid; Whose original title was “The Mirror’s Venus”
Which painting
a) depicts Jean de Dinteville and
his friend, Georges de Selve
and
b) who was the artist?
a) ‘The Ambassadors’
b) Hans Holbein the Younger
Name the firm of architects who
designed the Sainsbury wing.
Robert Venturi
Which king is the main subject of the Wilton Diptych?
Richard II who reigned from 1377-1399
What is the painting “The Toilet of Venus” by Diego Velazquez also known as?
The Rokeby Venus
According to Greek mythology in
Titian’s painting “Bacchus and
Ariadne”, who had abandoned
Ariadne on the island of Naxos?
Theseus
They refer to the story of Princess Ariadne, who, in love with the hero Theseus, helped him to kill the Minotaur at the palace of Knossos on the island of Crete. Theseus then abandoned her while she slept, on the Greek island of Naxos.
Name the hallucinogenic flowers
in Botticelli’s painting “Venus and
Mars”.
Sandro Botticelli may have depicted datura stramonium, a plant that’s also known as “poor man’s acid.”
Name the TWO ambassadors in
Holbein’s painting ‘The
Ambassadors’.
(i) Jean de Dinteville
(ii) Georges de Selve
the painting memorializes Jean de Dinteville, French ambassador to England, and his friend, Georges de Selve, who acted on several occasions as French ambassador to the Republic of Venice, to the Pope in Rome, and to England, Germany, and Spain.
What is the name given to the
smoky effect used by Leonardo
da Vinci in ‘The Virgin of the
Rocks’?
Leonardo achieves subtle transitions between light and shadow through another innovative technique, now known as ‘sfumato’ – from the verb ‘turn to smoke’.
Monet painted ‘The Gare St-
Lazare’ in 1877. In which city is
the gare (train station)?
Paris
This painting is one of a dozen views of the Gare Saint-Lazare that Monet painted in early 1877. He had known the station since his childhood, and it was also the terminal for trains to many of the key Impressionist sites west of Paris
In which artistic style did Seurat paint ‘Bathers at Asnieres’?
‘Bathers at Asnières’ is an important transitional work. It shows him developing the application of his novel pointillist technique to a large work on the scale of History painting.
Seurat is considered one of the most important Post-Impressionist painters.
Name TWO restrictions on the use of photography in the main galleries.
(i) Photography/filming is permitted in exhibitions for personal non-commercial use, unless otherwise stated on the label by the exhibited work.
(ii) Use of additional lighting or flash, tripods, and selfie sticks is not permitted
Name the 16th century artist
famous for biographies of the
lives of the Renaissance great
masters.
Giorgio Vasari
The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (Italian: Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori), often simply known as The Lives (Italian:Le Vite), is a series of artist biographies written by 16th-century Italian painter and architect Giorgio Vasari, which is considered “perhaps the most famous, and even today the most-read work of the older literature of art”, “some of the Italian Renaissance’s most influential writing on art”, and “the first important book onart history”.
Turner left two landscape
paintings to the nation, on
condition they were hung next to
which artist’s work?
Claude Gellée
When Turner died in 1851, he left to the National Gallery Dido building Carthage and Sun rising through Vapour on condition that they were hung ‘always between the two pictures painted by Claude’, which he named as ‘The Seaport’ and ‘The Mill’.
Why was Velasquez’s painting
The Toilet of Venus damaged by
Mary Richardson in 1914?
In 1914, Canadian suffragette Mary Richardson slashed the work with a meat cleaver to protest the arrest of Emmeline Pankhurst, a leader of the women’s suffrage movement in Great Britain at the time.
Which painting in the National
Gallery features in a scene with Q and James Bond in the film
Skyfall?
The Fighting Temeraire
World-famous spy 007 sits next to an unassuming man in the Gallery, in front of Turner’s ‘The Fighting Temeraire’. It is here that we see Q, played by Ben Whishaw, present Daniel Craig’s Bond with plane tickets and a gun, ahead of his next mission.
Who occupied the house in Constable’s painting The Haywain?
The house on the left side of the painting belonged to a neighbour, Willy Lott, a tenant farmer, who was said to have been born in the house and never to have left it for more than four days in his lifetime.
What type of paint did Van Eyck use in the Arnolfini Portrait?
Oil on oak
What is the title of the English
painting which finally found
success when it was exhibited in
Paris in 1824?
The Hay Wain
Name the family thought to have
commissioned Botticelli’s “Venus
and Mars”.
The wasps might provide a clue: vespe is the Italian for wasp, and Botticelli might have been making a pun on the name of the noble Florentine family, the Vespucci, who were patrons of his.
What is the title of the only
painting in the National Gallery
collection by Artemesia
Gentileschi?
Self Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria. In this self portrait, Artemisia shows herself in the guise of the 4th-century martyr, Saint Catherine of Alexandria. Sentenced to death by the emperor Maxentius, Catherine was bound to revolving wheels studded with iron spikes.
Where was the old gun ship The Fighting Temeraire finally broken up?
The painting depicts the 98-gun HMS Temeraire, one of the last second-rate ships of the line to have played a role in the Battle of Trafalgar, being towed up the Thames by a paddle-wheel steam tug in 1838, towards its final berth in Rotherhithe to be broken up for scrap.
What is gesso?
Gesso, also known as “glue gesso” or “Italian gesso”, is a white paint mixture used to coat rigid surfaces such as wooden painting panels or masonite as a permanent absorbent primer substrate for painting. It consists of a binder mixed with chalk, gypsum, pigment, or any combination of these.
Alternative brief answer; Gesso a plaster-like layer covering a wooden panel, preparing it for painting
Name TWO of the main artists of the High Renaissance.
(i) Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)
(ii) Michelangelo (1475–1564)
(iii) Raphael (1483–1520)
High Renaissance art, which flourished for about 35 years, from the early 1490s to 1527, when Rome was sacked by imperial troops, revolved around three towering figures: Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), Michelangelo (1475–1564), and Raphael (1483–1520).
Which animals are pulling the
chariot in Titian’s “Bacchus and
Ariadne”?
The two cheetahs pulling the chariot may also be personal references. Bacchus’ chariot is normally drawn by tigers or panthers, but Alfonso d’Este is known to have had a menagerie at the palace in which he kept a cheetah or a cheetah-like member of the cat family.
What hangs from the King’s neck in the ‘’Equestrian Portrait of Charles I’’?
“The Lesser George”.
Like the Great George, the badge shows St George the Martyr on horseback slaying a dragon, but it is flatter and gold. In earlier times, the badge was worn from a ribbon tied around the neck. These days thebadgeis worn suspended from a small gold link from the riband at the right hip.
What is Byzantine Art?
Art produced during the Middle Ages by the Byzantine Empire, or Eastern Roman Empire, spanning the fourth to the fifteenth century.
The style is defined by devotional, Christian subjects depicted in angular forms with sharp contours, flattened colour and gold decoration.
Byzantine art appeared in a wide range of art and design forms including painting, architecture, mosaic, metalwork and carved ivory relief, although it is most widely recognised for its lavish gold icons which still exist in churches around the world today.
What is International Gothic?
Courtly painting created across Europe from the late 14th to the mid 15th centuries.
Its distinguishing characteristics are a decorative stylisation combined with a rich use of colours and gold decoration. Often pictures which are categorised in this manner are spatially illogical, but include beautifully observed naturalistic details.
It was principally practised at courts in France, Italy and Bohemia. Among its notable exponents are Giovanni di Paolo, Pisanello and Stefan Lochner. See the entry for Gothic.
What is Early Renaissance?
Renaissance/14th to Early 16th Century
Renaissance is the French word for rebirth and can be associated with the concern in Italy for recreating the achievements of Antiquity whose art was seen as supreme. Historians usually refer to two periods, the Early and the High Renaissance, the earlier period coinciding approximately with the 15th century.
The term also applies generally to the more realistic style that was introduced by Masaccio and Donatello in Florence, and by extension, is sometimes used of works of the same period in Northern Europe, for example those of Robert Campin and Jan van Eyck in the Netherlands.
Figures became weightier and more three-dimensional, and the space they occupied was more convincingly constructed.
What is High Renaissance?
Renaissance/14th to Early 16th Century
Renaissance, meaning rebirth, was a 19th-century term applied by the German art historian Jakob Burckhardt to the culture of Italy from the 14th to 16th centuries - the equivalent of Vasari’s ‘rinascita’ (rebirth). There is much disagreement about its precise definition.
Generally speaking, the High Renaissance covers the later part of this period; in painting it is applied to the early decades of the 16th century, and in particular to the period which witnessed the ascendancy of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian.
What is Mannerism?
Mannerism/ late16th Century
Evolution of High Renaissance:
Human form very detailed, showing musculature, posed in contorted, twisted, elongated postures
Inspired by Michelangelo’s work on Sistine Chapel ceiling
What is Baroque?
Baroque/17th Century
In relation to painting and sculpture Baroque is used in a number of senses, but perhaps most usefully to describe large, usually 17th-century, works of a dramatic and exuberant nature which employ diagonal compositions and illusionistic effects in order to impress the viewer.
The works of the Flemish painter Rubens and the Roman sculptor Bernini are often described as Baroque in this sense. The term was originally derogatory and may be derived from the Portuguese word barroco, meaning an irregular pearl.
What is Rococo?
The term Rococo is a style label applied particularly to the painting, interior decoration and architecture popular in France during the reign of Louis XV (1715 - 1774). It was initially applied in a derogatory manner by Neo-classicists of the late 18th century. The word may derive from the French rocaille which describes the embellishment of grottoes and fountains, and by implication suggests whimsical decoration.
Rococo art is based on the study of natural forms; it is dominated by asymmetry, curved forms, and light bright colours.
What is Romanticism?
Romantic is a descriptive word applied to art, literature and music, chiefly of the early 19th century, which share certain characteristics. These include spirited individuality, overt emotion, drama, and an affinity with the natural world. Artists in the Collection whose work at some time has been called Romantic include Delacroix, Turner, Constable, Gericault and Friedrich.
Romanticism is contrasted with the various forms of Classicism.
What is Academic Art?
Academic art refers to the art which was created in accordance with the doctrines of the official academies of painting that dominated much of the art world from the 17th to the 19th centuries.
In these academies the merits of ancient art and the work of ‘classical’ painters such as Raphael and Poussin were extolled.
Academic training was strictly controlled. It initially involved drawing after prints, then after sculptures, then the drawing of the live model. This was followed by compositional studies, leading to the ultimate goal of History painting.
What is Impressionism?
The term, first used derisively, was derived from the title of a painting exhibited in 1874 by Monet, who exhibited the work independently of the official Salon in Paris along with artists such as Renoir, Cézanne and Pissarro.
‘Impressionism’ subsequently became widely used to describe the type of painting practised by this group of artists who exhibited together eight times up until 1886. They usually worked rapidly, in front of their subjects and often in the open air rather than in a studio, and took full advantage of the technical advances being made in the manufacture of artists’ materials.
Their characteristic broken or flickering brush work was particularly effective in capturing the fleeting quality of light. They tended to be attracted to similar subjects, namely aspects of modern urban life and landscapes.
What is Post-Impressionism?
Broadly speaking the term Post-Impressionism embraces the artists working in France in the 1880s, immediately after the Impressionists. It was coined by Roger Fry for his exhibition of 1910 in which he showed Cezanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin and Seurat.
The classification covers artists who were aware of Impressionism but who sought to move beyond it - the term is sometimes applied to late work of the original Impressionists.
In the main, the post-Impressionist artists were less concerned with recording optically accurate appearances - as the Impressionists had been - than with the symbolic or expressive possibilities of representation.
What is bole?
The red clay to which gold leaf adheres on the surface of a painting
What is a Diptych?
A two-part painting
What is a fresco?
A work painted into plaster either wet (true) or dry (secco)
What is gilding?
The adding of gold to a painting in several different ways
What is a Polyptych?
A many-part altarpiece
What is Sfumato?
The smoky blending of outlines to create a more three-dimensional effect of light and shadow
What is Sgraffito?
Painting over gold leaf and then scraping away some paint to reveal gold beneath
What is Tempera?
Paint made from the yolk of an egg mixed with powdered pigment
What is a Triptych?
A three-part painting
What is Chiaroscuro?
A strong contrast of light and dark, creating a dramatic three-
dimensional effect
What was the Council of Trent?
(Post-Tridentine = after the Council of Trent) a series of meetings held
by the Catholic church between 1545 and 1563 to discuss the doctrines
and future of the Catholic Church in Europe
What is Counter-Reformation?
(Catholic Reformation) sometimes also called Baroque, the term
used to describe the style of art to encourage folllowers back into the
Catholic church in the early C17th
What is Tenebrism from the Italian Tenebroso?
Similar to chiaroscuro, often even darker and with more shadow
What is the NG200 project?
To celebrate 200 years since the foundation of the National Gallery in 1824,a programme of inspirational exhibitions and outreach is happening around the country and around the world, under the banner NG200.
Who painted The Virgin and Child Enthroned, with Scenes of the Nativity and the Lives of the Saints, c.1262. NG564
Margarito of Arezzo
Aka
Margarito d’Arezzo
Who painted Self Portrait in a Straw Hat, 1782. NG1653
Elizabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun
When did Vincent Van Gogh paint ‘Sunflowers’, NG3863?
1888
Who painted ‘Sunflowers’ in 1888?
Vincent Van Gogh
Who painted The Hay Wain in 1821. NG1207
John Constable
Who painted Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria, 1615-17. NG6671
Artemesia Gentileschi
When did Artemesia Gentileschi paint her Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria, NG6671
1615-17
Who painted The Toilet of Venus (The Rokeby Venus)?
Diego Velazquez
(Full name: Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez)
When did Diego Velazquez paint The Toilet of Venus (Rokeby Venus), NG2057
1647-51
When did Margarito of Arezzo paint The Virgin and Child Enthroned with Scenes from the lives of the
Saints, NG564
c.1262
When was the Wilton Diptych painted?
1395-99
When did Jan van Eyck paint the Arnolfini Portrait?
1434
When did Sandro Botticelli paint Venus & Mars?
c.1485
When did Leonardo da Vinci paint Virgin of the Rocks
1491/2-9 and 1506-8
When did Frederic Leighton paint Cimabue’s Celebrated Madonna?
1853-5
When did Joshua Reynolds paint Colonel Tarleton?
1782
When did François-Hubert Drouais paint Madame de Pompadour at her Tambour Frame?
1763-4
When did Andrea Mantegna paint The introduction of the Cult of Cybele at Rome?
1505-6
When did Titian paint The Vendramin Family?
1540-45
When did Paolo Veronese paint The Family of Darius before Alexander?
1565-7
When did Johannes Vermeer paint Young Woman Standing at a Virginal?
c.1670-2
When did El Greco paint Christ Driving the Traders from the Temple?
c.1600
When did Anthony Van Dyck paint Equestrian Portrait of Charles I?
About 1638-9
When did Caravaggio paint The Supper at Emmaus?
1601
When did Canaletto paint The Stonemason’s Yard?
c.1725
When did William Hogarth paint Marriage a la Mode?
About 1743
When did Thomas Gainsborough paint Mr and Mrs Andrews?
c.1750
When did George Stubbs paint Whistlejacket?
About 1762
By what name is Giovanni Antonio Canal better known?
Canaletto
When did Joseph Wright of Derby paint An experiment on a bird in an air pump?
1768
When did Joseph Mallord WilliamTurner paint The Fighting Temeraire, Tugged to her last Berth to be broken up, 1838?
1839
When did Jean-Honoré Fragonard paint Psyche Showing her sisters gifts from Cupid?
1753
When did Claude paint The Mill (Landscape with the Marriage of Isaac and Rebekah)?
1648
When did Paul Delaroche paint The Execution of Lady Jane Grey?
1833
When did Claude Monet paint Bathers at La Grenouillere?
1869
When did Georges Seurat paint Bathers at Asniers?
1884
What is the full title of the Wilton Diptych?
Richard II presented to the Virgin and Child by his patron Saint John the Baptist and Saints Edward and Edmund
Where can the ‘Rucellao Madonna’ by Duccio di Buoninsegna be seen today?
In the Uffizi Gallery in Florence Italy.
