Comparative Art History Test Questions
Course Introduction
Comparative Art History explores the development, contexts, and meanings of art from diverse cultures and periods, fostering an understanding of how visual expression responds to social, religious, and political influences. Through critical analysis and comparison, students examine key artistic movements, styles, and individual works across global traditions, investigating the ways in which art reflects and shapes cultural identities. The course emphasizes cross-cultural perspectives, offering insights into similarities and differences in artistic production and interpretation around the world.
Recommended Textbook
Gardner s Art Through the Ages A Concise Global History 3rd Edition by Fred S. Kleiner
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Page 2
Chapter 1: Prehistory and the First Civilizations
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which object represents the beginning of monumental sculpture in the ancient world?
A) Human figure, from Ain Ghazal
B) Statuettes of two worshippers, from the Square Temple at Eshunna
C) Victory stele of Naram-Sin
D) Head of an Akkadian ruler, from Nineveh
Answer: A
Q2) Paleolithic artists usually represented animals in ____.
A) frontal views
B) profile views
C) narrative scenes
D) hunting scenes
Answer: B
Q3) Discuss the importance of the Paleolithic female figures.
Answer: It has been suggested that these figures represent the female form whose childbearing capabilities insured the survival of the species rather than specific individuals.
Q4) Explain the significance of the Neolithic period and its art and architecture.
Answer: HumAnswer began to settle in fixed abodes and began to domesticate plants and animals.
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Chapter 2: Ancient Greece
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Sample Questions
Q1) The Classical period of Greek art began around ____.
A) 570 BCE
B) 520 BCE
C) 480 BCE
D) 400 BCE
Answer: C
Q2) The relieving triangle above the Lion Gate at Mycenae was caused by the ____.
A) cantilevered stones of the corbeled arch
B) scale of the Cyclopean masonry
C) bulbous capitals of the columns
D) shape of the citadel's walls
Answer: A
Q3) Which Athenian politician reconstructed the Athenian Acropolis?
A) Pausanius
B) Polykleitos
C) Xerxes
D) Pericles
Answer: D
Q4) What does Minoan art and architecture reveal about life on Knossos?
Answer: It reveals a peaceful existence,rituals,and reliance on the sea.
Page 4
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Chapter 3: The Roman Empire
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Sample Questions
Q1) How did the reliefs on the Column of Trajan accurately record the character of the Dacian Wars?
A) Dacians were depicted as ferocious fighters.
B) Trajan was shown actively participating in battles.
C) Battles scenes only occupy one quarter of the frieze.
D) Roman soldiers are outnumbered by Dacian troops.
Answer: D
Q2) What is concrete,and what effect did it have upon construction?
Answer: Concrete is a building material of great tensile strength that allows for enormous flexibility in shaping both interior space and exteriors.
Q3) What is a groin vault?
Answer: A groin vault results from the intersection of two barrel vaults.
Q4) The Apulu of Veii is made of ____.
A) bronze
B) terracotta
C) marble
D) wood
Answer: B
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Chapter 4: Early Christianity and Byzantium
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Q1) What are the parts of a Christian basilica and what are their functions?
Q2) One of these buildings is Early Christian and the other Byzantine.Identify them,describe the structural system used for each,and note the historical factors that might account for their similarities and differences.
Q3) Discuss the evolution of the depiction of Christ in Early Christian and Byzantine art.How was the image changed and modified over time? Consider the political and social climate of each period and area.Use specific examples to support your essay.
Q4) Emperor Justinian appears in the apse mosaic at ____.
A) San Vitale in Ravenna
B) San Apollinare in Classe
C) Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai
D) Hagia Sophia
Q5) Which biblical story prefigured Christ's resurrection?
A) Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac
B) Jonah and the Whale
C) Adam and Eve
D) Entry into Jerusalem
Q6) How does this structure draw upon the Imperial Roman architectural tradition?
Q7) How does Santa Costanza mirror Imperial Roman architecture?
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Chapter 5: The Islamic World
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Sample Questions
Q1) Compare and contrast the luxury arts of Islam with those covered previously in this class.How do they respond to their respective cultures? Use examples to support your essay.
Q2) Describe the Alhambra.
Q3) How does the Great Mosque of Kairouan owe much to Greco-Roman and early Christian architecture?
Q4) Compare the role religious ritual played in the design of the Islamic hypostyle mosque and the Early Christian basilica.Use examples to support your essay.
Q5) What is the only thing Muslims require for prayer?
A) minaret
B) minbar
C) imam
D) qibla
Q6) Compare these two images.How do they respond to their functions and reflect their respective periods?
Q7) How do these images reflect Islamic design?
Q8) Briefly describe the design of the Ardabil funerary carpet of Shaykh Safi al-Din.How is this design significant?
Q9) Describe muqarnas.What was their function?
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Chapter 6: Early Medieval and Romanesque Europe
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Q1) How do these two churches look forward to Gothic architecture?
Q2) What church plan was used as the model for the Palatine Chapel at Aachen?
A) Old Saint Peter's
B) Santa Costanza
C) Hagia Sophia
D) San Vitale
Q3) How do these churches reflect the regional character of Romanesque architecture?
Q4) Describe the vaults used in Romanesque buildings.
Q5) How does this work express Carolingian ideas?
Q6) Briefly describe a cross-inscribed carpet page from the Lindisfarne Gospels and its significance.
Q7) The building system using heavy square piers alternating with columns is known as the ____ system.
A) revived modularity
B) modular alternation
C) alternate support
D) squared support
Q8) Compare and contrast two regional styles of Romanesque architecture.Use examples to support your essay.
Q9) How does this work show its classical heritage? Page 8
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Page 9
Chapter 7: Gothic and Late Medieval Europe
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Sample Questions
Q1) Many Gothic cathedrals were dedicated to ____.
A) the Virgin Mary
B) the Holy Spirit
C) the Trinity
D) Christ the Judge
Q2) Why are Giotto's painted figures called sculptural?
Q3) Assess the role of light in Gothic architecture both from the symbolic and from the structural point of view.Use examples to support your essay.
Q4) How does this interior reflect the High Gothic style?
Q5) How does the work of Simone Martini exemplify the International Style?
Q6) Why did Sienna commission the Maestà from Duccio?
A) to honor the city's patron saint, Santa Sienna
B) to illustrate the city's devotion to the Virgin
C) to celebrate the city's victory over Florence
D) to mark the inauguration of the cult of Mary
Q7) Attribute the images on the screen to a culture and give an approximate date.Give the reasons for your attributions,using complete sentences and referring to specific works discussed in class.
Q8) How is this building an architecture of voids?
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Chapter 8: The Early Renaissance in Europe
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Sample Questions
Q1) The Florentine Pollaiuolo is known for ____.
A) figures that appear ecorché
B) the representation of figures in action
C) his work for the Medici
D) all of these choices
Q2) How does Perugino's Christ Delivering the Keys of the Kingdom to Saint Peter represent the power of the papacy?
Q3) How does this work reflect the values of fifteenth-century Flanders?
Q4) Define atmospheric perspective.
Q5) How did the competition for the baptistery doors of the Cathedral of Florence herald the path of Renaissance art in fifteenth-century Italy? Use examples to support your essay.
Q6) How does this work reflect the interests of its patron?
Q7) Identify this painting and explain what it represents.
Q8) Contrast the style of fifteenth-century Burgundian and Flemish and Italian painting.How are they similar? How are they different? Use examples to support your essay.
Q10) Explain how an engraving is made. Page 11
Q9) Identify this sculpture and explain its subject and its significance for the history of art.
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Chapter 9: High Renaissance and Mannerism in Europe
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which artist applied for a position by telling his prospective patron that he could "contrive various and endless means of offence and defense"?
A) Raphael
B) Leonardo da Vinci
C) Michelangelo
D) Titian
Q2) The first known Northern European self-portrait by a woman is by ____.
A) Levina Teerlinc
B) Judith Leyster
C) Caterina van Hemessen
D) Lavinia Fontana
Q3) Leonardo da Vinci's paintings are characterized by ____.
A) sfumato
B) monumental nude figures
C) Mannerist elongation
D) colorito
Q4) How does this work exemplify Venetian painting?
Q5) How did Italian architects working in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries adjust classical architecture to suit their needs? Use examples to support your essay.
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Chapter 10: Baroque Europe
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Sample Questions
Q1) Rembrandt's Hundred Guilder Print is a/an ____.
A) woodcut
B) engraving
C) etching
D) aquatint
Q2) What is the subject of the series of paintings Marie de' Medici commissioned from Rubens? How does this series exemplify Rubens' interactions with royalty?
Q3) What types of shapes did Borromini employ at San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane?
A) circle and square
B) rectilinear and perpendicular
C) concave and convex
D) oval and trapezoid
Q4) Rembrandt's The Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq represents ____.
A) the maneuvers of the Flemish military
B) a military company assembling for a parade
C) the victory of the Dutch army at Utrecht
D) the victory of Cocq's forces at Delft
Q5) How does this church reflect current architectural style?
Q6) What was the relationship of the French Royal Academy of Art and Versailles?
Q7) How did Frans Hals revolutionize Dutch painting?
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Chapter 11: Rococo to Neoclassicism in Europe and America
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Q1) Why is this image called an altarpiece for the new civic religion?
Q2) Explain how science and history became major themes in eighteenth-century art.Use examples to support your essay.
Q3) Reconstruct the Rococo setting of the French aristocratic elite.Where did they live? What did they have in their homes? Use examples to support your essay.
Q4) Which artist is known for painting vedute?
A) Fragonard
B) Canaletto
C) Kaufmann
D) Houdon
Q5) (Figure 11-14)
A) Hogarth
B) David
C) Kaufman
D) Canaletto
Q6) What type of subject matter did "veduta" painting portray?
Q7) How does Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun represent 18th-century portraiture?
Q8) Compare the paintings of Hogarth and Reynolds.How does each address the issue of class? Use examples to support your essay. Page 15
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Q1) What is the subject of Manet's Olympia?
A) the Olympic games
B) Greek gods
C) a Parisian barmaid
D) a prostitute
Q2) How did Courbet's The Stone Breakers communicate the drudgery of manual labor?
A) a palette of dirty browns and grays
B) soft pastels for the stones
C) strong, diagonal line
D) bright color to highlight the labor
Q3) Compare and contrast the goals of Romanticism and Realism.Use examples to support your essay.
Q4) Compare Neoclassicism's emphasis on the heroic and Romanticism's interest in the sublime.Use examples to support your essay.
Q5) How does this work reflect political events?
Q6) Géricault's Raft of the Medusa represents ____.
A) the artist's nightmarish imagery
B) characters from Greek mythology
Page 17
C) a scene from the Greek war for independence
D) the aftermath of a nineteenth-century French shipwreck
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Page 18
Chapter 13: Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Symbolism,1870 to 1900
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Q1) Klimt's The Kiss conveys the flamboyance and decadence of the period by its ____.
A) formalism
B) opulent sensuousness
C) tonality
D) perspectival space
Q2) Compare and contrast the work of Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec.How are they similar? How are they different? Use examples to support your essay.
Q3) Claude Monet enjoyed painting in the outdoors,a practice known as ____,which was popular amongst the Impressionists.
A) contrapposto
B) in situ
C) en plein air
D) chiaroscuro
Q4) How does this painting participate in modernity's honesty?
Q5) Explain the principles of Post-Impressionist painting as seen in works by van Gogh,Gauguin,Seurat,and Cézanne.Use examples to support your essay.
Q6) Why did Gauguin travel to Tahiti?
Page 19
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Chapter 14: Modernism in Europe and America,1900 to 1945
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Sample Questions
Q1) What is a mobile and who made them?
Q2) The work of Ernst Kirchner shows ____.
A) the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites
B) the influence of Italian Renaissance frescoes
C) subjects drawn from the industrialized urban setting
D) the influence of Analytical Cubism
Q3) Franz Marc claimed that Fate of the Animals was like a premonition of ____.
A) World War II
B) the Great Depression
C) the Russian Revolution
D) World War I
Q4) Which of the following artists raised photography to the level of "fine art"?
A) Alfred Stieglitz
B) Dorthea Lange
C) Käthe Kollwitz
D) Dorothea Lange
Q5) Explain the principles of Surrealist art.Use examples to support your essay.
Q6) What is organic architecture?
Q7) What is the artist's goal? What innovation did the artist introduce?
Q8) How does this photograph participate in avant garde art?
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Chapter 15: Modernism and Postmodernism in Europe and America, 1945
to 1980
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Q1) Which answer describes the ideas of Post-Painterly Abstraction?
A) The work should reveal the artist's hand
B) Art should convey deep, psychological drama
C) The work should reveal the workings of the unconscious mind
D) The work should contain no reference to the world outside the object.
Q2) The New York artist whose paintings employed color as a doorway to another reality of emotional expression was ____.
A) Jackson Pollock
B) Francis Bacon
C) Mark Rothko
D) Willem De Kooning
Q3) The subject of many of Diane Arbus' photographs is:
A) idealized images of children
B) urban landscapes
C) religious architecture
D) unidealized images of people
Q4) Why did Andy Warhol use the silk screening technique in Green Coca-Cola Bottles?
Q5) What artist used the technique of benday dots and why?
Page 21
Q6) Evaluate the position of commodity culture in art of the late twentieth-century.Use examples to support your essay.
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Chapter 16: Contemporary Art Worldwide
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Q1) Deconstructivist architecture is associated with the writings of ____.
A) Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson
B) Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg
C) Richard Rogers and Renzo Pianzo
D) Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault
Q2) Which artist's work led to an important court case in Cincinnati about freedom of expression for artists.
A) Barbara Kruger
B) Jean-Michel Basquiat
C) Robert Mapplethorpe
D) Matthew Barney
Q3) Surrounded Islands by Christo and Jeanne-Claude was installed for a period of:
A) one year
B) fifty days
C) two weeks
D) ten years
Q4) Whose work does Jeff Koons' art recall?
Q5) Discuss the controversy surrounding the exhibition Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment.What did people find offensive about this exhibition and what was the final resolution?
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Chapter 17: South and Southeast Asia
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Q1) Which of the following would NOT describe a stupa?
A) cardinal points are marked by toranas
B) was a tomb
C) was a type of mandala, cosmic diagram
D) must have a harmika, fenced railing atop the stupa dome
Q2) One explanation for the sexually explicit images at Khajuraho relates them to which of the following?
A) fertility and the propagation of life
B) Greco-Roman influences
C) Buddhist practices
D) Khmer influences
Q3) The pillars of Ashoka form which of the following?
A) the path to enlightenment
B) the cosmic mountain
C) the axis of the universe
D) the Wheel of the Law
Q4) How does this image reflect the particular religious beliefs it illustrates?
Q5) Discuss the representation of the human figure in Hindu architecture.How does it reflect Hindu teachings? How does figural representation change from region to region? Use examples to support your essay.
Page 24
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Chapter 18: China and Korea
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Q1) Which of the following garden designs would NOT conform to the Chinese aesthetic?
A) geometric floral designs
B) uncultivated irregularities
C) contrived visual surprises
D) reflecting pools with trees and flowers
Q2) Who was Qin Shi Huangdi?
Q3) How do these images reflect the essence of Chinese landscape painting?
Q4) Describe the method used to create the army of statues for the First Emperor's tomb.
Q5) Which of the following dynasties designed the core of the imperial palace in the Forbidden City?
A) Qing
B) Ming
C) Yuan
D) Song
Q6) Evaluate the impact of the Tang Dynasty.
Q7) Explain Shang bronzes and what they say about the period.
Q8) What is the artist attempting to illustrate?
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Q9) During the Yuan Dynasty why was bamboo used to symbolize a Chinese gentleman?
Chapter 19: Japan
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Q1) What is the tie between ukiyo-e and Buddhism?
Q2) In the Tale of Genji,the metaphor,which came to mean fading life and love and the season of autumn,is which of the following?
A) chrysanthemums
B) peonies
C) cherry blossoms
D) bush-clover
Q3) ____ was the leading Momoyama painter of murals and screens.
A) Ando Hiroshige
B) Tori Busshi
C) Kano Eitoku
D) Honami Koetsu
Q4) Assess the splashed-ink style and its implications as an expression of Zen.Consider the Chinese influences as well.Use examples to support your essay.
Q5) Select three works of art.Describe them.How do these works reflect Japanese visual arts? How do they echo Japanese aesthetics? What outside influences,if any,also become important in shaping the works you have selected? How are the selected works innovative?
Q6) What is this and what type of space does it evoke?
Page 26
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Chapter 20: Native America
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Q1) Contrast Coatlicue with the Katsina of the Hopi.What visual elements help define each work? How does each work define its creating culture? Consider the functionality of the objects and their respective environments.
Q2) How does this figure represent savagery and tenderness?
Q3) What architectural feature has been found in nearly all Mesoamerican cultures?
A) a circular temple
B) a ball court
C) a rectangular plaza with a fountain at east end
D) an open courtyard with a kiva in the center
Q4) Which of the following has been proposed as the identity of the giant Olmec heads?
A) priests of the Feathered-Serpent
B) deities
C) Maya overlords
D) rulers
Q5) Select three monuments or art forms.Evaluate each.How do they represent their creating cultures? What similarities,if any,exist among the selected works? What differences,if any,exist among the selected works? How does each work function within its society? What are the political and religious implications of each work?
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Chapter 21: Africa
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Q1) Kongo Nkisi n'Kondi are believed to ____.
A) heal
B) communicate with the dead
C) house the soul of the first born
D) take on the spirit of its creator
Q2) The equestrian figure on a fly-whisk handle was created by the lost-wax bronze casting technique used much earlier in ____.
A) the Mediterranean
B) Africa
C) North America
D) Egypt
Q3) Images of couples is the most common theme for the art of which of the following societies?
A) Mende
B) Kongo
C) Benin
D) Dogon
Q4) What is the function of the Kongo nail figure?
Q5) Why do scholars believe that the Great Zimbabwe had extensive trade networks?
Page 28
Q6) What is the purpose of most African masquerades?
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