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Physical structure of the human body

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Anatomy

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The era of the Greek and Roman civilizations, which ended with the decline and fall of the romas Empire in the 5thC AD

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Antiquity

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Low stand or chair, with drawing board at one end

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Artist's Donkey

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Print made for the artist's own purposes, signed and not numbered

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Artist's proof

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When the artist who produced a work is not known for sure and scholars have suggested from evidence that it is the work of a specific person

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Ascribed or attributed to

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ornate style of art and architecture popular in the 1600s and 1700s

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Baroque

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Low relief sculpture

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Bas relief

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a substance that makes pigments adhere to a surface

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Binder

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Brown pigment made from soot, used as a brown wash for drawings and watercolors especially in the 16th and 17th

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Bistre

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Printing by use of carved blocks of wood or metal

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Block printing

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Italian for 'shop' or 'workplace' ;the studio of an Italian artist used by pupils and assistants

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Bottega

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Easily worked metal

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Bronze

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Drawing in ink with a fine brush

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brush drawing

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In oil painting, the marks made with brushes are like a signature, and produce an individual texture as well as an aesthetic value. Has been called "one of the painter's most powerful tools in the creation of his own world

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Brushstroke

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a sculpture of the head and shoulders of a person

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Bust

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a piece of cloth on which an artist paints

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Canvas

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Italian for 'big piece of paper'. A full size exact, final stage drawing for a painting, ready for transferring to canvas or wall or tapestry

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Cartoon

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Soft limestone, sometimes used as a drawing material or mixed to make pastels and other crayons

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Chalk

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Soft, dark carbon substance(from charring willow or vine wood) used for drawing , especially preliminary drawing where easy erasing is useful

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Charchoal

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An Italian word 'light-shade', designating the contrast of dark and light in a painting, drawing, or print.

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Chiaroscuro

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Originally meant that artworks were based on Greek and Roman example;

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Classic

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Art based on the analysis and understanding of classical examples

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Classicism

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Colored drawing tool was made of dry pigment and chalk

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Crayon

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Usually parallel line, close together, crossed at an angle with other parallel lines to creat shading effects on drawings or prints

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Cross-hatching

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Painting, usually an altarpiece, made up of two hinged panels

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Diptych

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Upright stand used by artists to hold the canvas or panel

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Easel

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Tempera(paint made out of powdered pigments) which is bound together with egg yolk and/or white

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Egg Tempera

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Old process, used by printmakers, of cutting lines into a wood block or metal plate in order to make many copies or impressions of a printed work. Originally , the term was only applied to intaglio(Italian for 'cut in'- on copper plate) printing, from the mid-15th onwards

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Engraving

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Method of printmaking where the metal (usually copper) plate is covered with resin (resistant to acid), a line is drawn on the plate with a needle exposing the copper, and the exposed parts are the ones which print: when the plate is immersed in acid. The acid eats into the exposed parts; the key factor is the control exerted by the artist over the immersion process

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Etching

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The front of a building

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Facade

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Italian for 'fresh'. Painting on a wall using pigment mixed with water, applied quickly and decisively to the plaster while it is still damp- so that colors are absorbed and remains fresh. Goes back to antiquity.

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Fresco

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Large painting, which needs to be hung in the spacious surroundings of a gallery or museum

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Gallery painting

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Absorbent ground(of chalk or gypsum) used as a base for tempera painting or some kinds of oil painting

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Gesso

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New application of gold leaf to the surface of a painting or other surface

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Gilding

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Originally used to describe northern European architecture from the 12thC to the 16thC (a non-classical architecture). the term was extended. as a term of abuse. to apply to all the arts of that pre-Renaissance period. 'Gothic' was seen as the work of the Goths rather than 'the ancients' and therefore barbaric. An emphasis on verticals. such as pointed arches and rib-vaulting; carved decoration; elongation of form to express religious feeling; and brilliant color - all were parts of the style. Above all. Gothic art was 'transcendental' and dedicated to religious observance - and was thus downgraded by Renaissance humanists.

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Gothic art

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Watercolor paint mixed with white pigments, making the paint opaque and giving it more weight and body (almost like oil paint in its effect. Only duller)

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Gouache

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Italian for 'scratching'. Technique for decorating stuccoed walls, in which a layer of plaster is applied over a different colored layer, and a design then scratched through the top layer. Popular in 16thC Italy. The plural 'graffiti' applies to the drawing or scratching of words onto the surface of public walls - an illicit activity until the 1970s when, following the invention of the aerosol spray can, graffiti moved from public walls and New York subway trains into fashionable galleries. Then, when the art public rejected both the graffiti and the spray cans, it went back onto public walls again.

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Graffito

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Association of tradesmen, craftsmen, artists, or other professionals, organized for the regulation and control of apprenticeship and good practice. In the pre-renaissance period, all painters had to belong to one, and be apprenticed to a master (unless they served the ruling prince). In Giotto's time, in Florence, paintings belonged to the Medici e Speziali (the Doctors and Apothecaries Guild) Only a master could set up on his own; and to qualify asa master, the apprentice had to submit a masterpiece. During the Renaissance, artists such as Leonardo and Michelangelo reacted against the guilds, while defining their new role as that of a gentlemen of learning rather than a tradesmen or craftsman. Eventually, the guilds were superseded by academies

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Guilds

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The high point, or climax of Renaissance painting and sculpture(c. 1490-1520)- especially evidenced by the work of Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo, which was said to have reached an 'ideal of harmony' by that time

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High Renaissance art

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The depiction of scenes from history to embody intellectual concepts or moral lessons

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History painting

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the distant point at which sky and ground appear to meet- which may be drawn across the pictorial space and corresponds to the artist's eye-level. The vanishing point is on the line

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Horizon line

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Italian for 'mixture, thick color'... paint applied thickly to a canvas or panel, sometimes with a palette knife. This leaves distinctive marks in the paint

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Impasto

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'Ism' invented in the 1920s to describe a style which was at its height between the High Renaissance and Baroque in Europe (c. 1520-1620). The Italian word maniera was first used by Giorgio Vasari during the Renaissance to describe work which disobeyed the classical 'rules' of proportion and perspective by making intellectual rather than visual points; but by the end of the16thC Mannerism had become a virtuoso, highly ornate form of art - especially fond of vivid colors, elongated shapes and highly charged subject-matter. Much prized by the royal courts of the time. Best-known practitioner (middle period of Mannerism) was El Greco.

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Mannerism

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Originally, the piece of work with which an apprentice of the guild becomes a master- by showing all-around competence; today, the term is applied to an artist's finest work or even more generally, to any particularly fine work

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Masterpiece

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Liquid added to paint in order to make it flow more easily. Also, the material/ process used by an artist (such as oils or watercolors). Also, liquid with which pigment in powder form are mixed to make paint

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Medium

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Very small painting, usually a portrait, made on ivory, parchment or vellum, and in the 16th century- worn by courtiers as a memento of loved ones

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Miniature painting

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Italian for 'sketch', or rather for a small, sometimes finished, version of a larger picture, to be shown to a patron

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Modello or modelletto

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Decorations of walls and floors, from the ancient Greeks and Romans onwards, made of small pieces of colored glass, stone, marble or ceramic set in a form of cement

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Mosaic

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Painting either on a wall, attached to the surface of a wall or made on panels which are o become a wall

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Mural

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The attempt to depict figures, objects and settings in a realistic (or unmediated or 'true to life') way, without stylization, and without letting the object's surroundings get in the way. This usually resulted in work which was less" realistic" than work which aimed for a rather less restrictive view of nature. The term is sometimes applied to Dutch 17thC and even Renaissance painting.

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Naturalism

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Paint made by mixing ground pigment with oil (usually linseed) as a binding agent. The earliest paintings to be made exclusively with oil paint were produced in the early 15thC when the medium was improved and popularized by Jan van Eyck. Oil had in fact been used in paints for a very long time before it became a standard medium.

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Oil paint

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Rigid painting surface of wood or metal, the support for most painting before the rise of canvas in the early 15thC

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Panel

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French for 'imitation', an artwork in the style of, or using assorted visual ideas from another artist- the ideas are 'recombined' as a work which could have been made by the original artist. Distinct from a forgery, more like a parallel or borrowed artwork

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Pastiche

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In classical and some Renaissance architecture, the triangular area immediately under the roof of a building- often embellished with sculpture. Also, similar triangular area over doors and windows

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Pediment

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visual systems by which an illusion of depth is created by either linear or aerial atmospheric means, on a two-dimensional surface. and usually organized from a single point of view. Perspective becomes considerably more complicated when it involves more than one vanishing point, more than one eye-level. It has been, in the words of one commentator, 'one of the chief areas of study and a criterion of excellence in Western art for many centuries' in particular since its 'laws' were codified during the Renaissance.

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Perspective

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Base or lower tier of a large church altarpiece, which was often decorated with paintings or carvings

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Predella

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Impression made by pressing an incised block or plate, or coated screen, which has been inked, onto a suitably receptive surface- such as paper. Proof: print made by an artist or printer to study, to make sure the process is working satisfactorily

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Print

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the relation or ratio of one part to another or to the whole - often associated in the history of art since Renaissance times with the search for 'ideal beauty' and harmony in a work of art.

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Proportion

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Italian for 'small boy', chubby, dimpled, often nude child who tends to have sprouted wings to fly around religious or allegorical paintings from the Renaissance onwards. Sometimes called a cherub, he seems at times to be related to Cupid.

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Putto pl. putti

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Image or motif which sticks out from a fixed background in carved or molded sculpture and is therefore not free-standing. The image may stick out in high (alto). medium (mezzo) or low (bas) relief Renaissance: French for 'rebirth', like the Italian rinascimento; traditionally, the rebirth or revival of art and literature under the influence of Greek and Roman models in 14thC - 16thC Europe, which started in Italy. Giorgio Vasari used the label rinascita to describe this in 1550 - when it was still going on around him. Since the late 19thC, the term has been refined:

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Relief

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(c. 1400-1500), when there was a new interest in 'man and his works' and in the search for principles and technical systems) and High Renaissance (c. 1500-27), covering the mature work of Leonardo, the early work of Michelangelo and the classical work of Raphael). The Renaissance also took root in northern Europe, with interesting effects from the mid 16thC onwards. One long-term result of the Renaissance in general was a definitive change in the status and role of the visual artist. But it has to be said that the Renaissance in general is not a particularly useful concept in art history.

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Renaissance

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Probably from the French rocaille meaning 'grotto-work', elegant and ornate European (especially French and southern German) art from c. 1715 to the 1750s, with an emphasis on curves (such as in scallop shells), pastel colors and light especially significant in interior decoration. Starting as a reaction against the ponderousness of the late Baroque, Rococo was superseded by the seriousness of Neo-Classicism.

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Rococo

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Western European art - principally architecture - in the 11thC and 12thC. epitomized by massive pillared buildings (esp. church buildings) with rounded arches, plus much stone-carving in relief on columns and doorways, some of it (the vaults) a heritage from Roman art.

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Romanesque

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Group of artists whose work is thought to have resemblances - through country of origin. education apprenticeship, membership of a movement or shared influence.

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School

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Three-dimensional artwork created by carving, modeling or (more recently) constructing or arranging material.

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Sculpture

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Italian for 'evaporate' or 'blend'; the transitions of tone from light to dark in a painting by gradual stages, as if seen through smoke or mist. Leonardo promoted the technique, as a way of achieving visually the effect of' relief'.

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Sfumato

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Preliminary or 'rough draft' drawing, painting or model - often rapid - made as a prelude to a fully fledged composition. For example, a landscape painter might make quick, spontaneous sketches of various lighting conditions or views. A pocket sketchbook

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Sketch

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Quick-drying painting medium that mixes ground pigment with a binding agent (egg l'oeil is no more than a very clever piece of visual yolk, or egg yolk plus white of egg) and diluting liquid. Dutch artists in the 17thC used water

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Tempera

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Colors such as red and yellow which seem 'warm' in a painting - and seem also to advance; contrasted with 'cool' colors such as the blues, which appear to recede.

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Warm colors

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Print made from a block of wood which has been carved in relief; the parts not cut away are the parts which print. Woodcuts were used for book illustration from the 5thC to the 17thC in Europe, and reached their high point in the work of Albrecht Durer. Still used by artists.

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Woodcut

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