Answer any one of the questions asked in the “Think About It” sections at the end of chapters 19 or 22 (they are listed below). Besides using your textbook, students are required to utilize at least one other outside scholarly source to answer their chosen question.
Images: At least one image must be placed in the document, with a caption and citation or URL to its webpage.
Format: The title page should have a title that indicates the student’s own thesis, along with the student name, date and course name. The chosen “Think About It” question must be placed in quotation marks (” “) above the first paragraph of the essay with an in-text citation to its page number in the book.
Organization: The essay requires an introduction that indicates the student’s thesis statement; body paragraphs with one topic per paragraph; as well as a conclusion that sums up the main points.
Citation Style: APA.
Document Style: MS Word (.doc or .docx) or .rtf.
“Think About It” Questions [Choose one]:
Ch. 19:
- 1. Explain how oil-painting technique allowed fifteenth-century Flemish painters to achieve unprecedented descriptive effects in their work. Support your answer by discussing one specific work in this chapter.
- 2. Discuss the symbolic meanings that fifteenth-century viewers would have comprehended in the objects in the domestic environment of either the Mérode Altarpiece (fig. 19–10) or the Arnolfini double portrait (fig. 19–1).
- 3. How have fifteenth-century northern paintings been characterized as devotional visions of the patrons who are portrayed in them? Use a specific work discussed in this chapter as the focus of your answer.
- 4. Why did printmaking become a major pictorial medium in northern Europe during the fifteenth century? Choose a work discussed in this chapter and explain how it supports your answer.
Ch. 22:
- 1. Explore the influence of Italian art and ideas on the work and persona of German artist Albrecht Dürer. Choose one of his works from this chapter and discuss its Italianate features and the ways in which it departs from and draws on earlier Northern European traditions.
- 2. Discuss the impact of the Protestant Reformation on the visual arts in northern Europe, focusing your discussion on types of subject matter that patrons sought.
- 3. Choose one European court that employed artists working in a “foreign” tradition from another part of Europe and assess how this internationalism fostered the breaking down of regional and national boundaries in European art. Ground your discussion in the work of specific artists.
- 4. Choose a work of art from this chapter that displays extraordinary technical skill in more than one medium. How was its virtuosity achieved, and how is that virtuosity highlighted as an important factor in the work’s significance?