Thursday Vocab

The earliest European painters depicted animals, such as wild boar and buffalo, on the walls of caves more than 20,000 years ago. Two examples of cave paintings are found in Lascaux, France, and Altamira, Spain.

An art style developed after Byzantine became the capital of the Roman Empire (c. 330). With monumental, stylized, rigid images set on gold backgrounds, this art appears in religious mosaics, panel paintings, and manuscript illuminations.

A movement begun in France with sculpture (c. 1200) followed by Gothic painting (c. 1300). These art forms had been preceded by Gothic architecture; the first landmark structure is part of the abbey of Saint-Denis. This is a graceful, linear, elegant style more naturalistic than earlier European forms far less rigid than  Byzantine art.

A style that emerged in France (c. mid-eleventh century). Ornamental, stylized, and complex in both sculpture and painting. Often used in huge Romanesque churches with massive barrel vaults anf few wall openings, which encouraged monumental frescoes-of animal, vegetable, and religious motifs.