Skip to content
Back Home
Search

All Results

Generic filters
Search in excerpt
  • About
      • Smarthistory is public art history
      • Is Smarthistory reliable?
      • Press coverage
      • Board of Advisors and Board of Trustees
      • Major donors
      • Smarthistory partners
      • Content editors and contributors
      • Recommended by…
      • A Smarthistory timeline
      • Contribute an essay to Smarthistory
      • Contact Us
      • Support our work
      • At Smarthistory, the Center for Public Art History, we believe art has the power to transform lives and to build understanding across cultures. We believe that the brilliant histories of art belong to everyone, no matter their background.

        With 503 contributors from 201 colleges, universities, museums, and research centers, Smarthistory is the most-visited art history resource in the world.
  • Histories of Art
      • Prehistoric
        • Overview of Prehistoric
          • Paleolithic
          • Neolithic
      • Africa
        • Overview of Africa
            • East Africa
            • West Africa
            • North Africa
            • Southern Africa
            • Central Africa
      • Americas
        • Overview of Americas to 1900
            • North America to 1500
            • North America 1500 – 1900
            • South America to 1500
            • South America 1500 – 1900
      • Asia
        • Overview of Asia
            • Hinduism and Buddhism
            • China
            • Japan
            • Korea
            • South Asia
            • Afghanistan
            • Southeast Asia
            • The Himalayas
      • Ancient Mediterranean
        • Overview of Ancient Mediterranean
            • Ancient Near East
            • Egyptian
            • Aegean
            • Greek
            • Nabataean
            • Etruscan
            • Roman
            • Palmyra
      • Medieval Europe & Byzantine
        • Overview of Medieval Europe + Byzantium
            • A beginner’s guide
            • Christianity and art
            • Judaism and art
            • The medieval book
            • Early Christian
            • Byzantine
            • Carolingian
            • Ottonian
            • Romanesque
            • Gothic Art
            • The crusades
      • The Islamic World
        • Overview of the Islamic World
          • Early Period
          • Medieval Period
          • Later period
      • Europe 1300-1800
        • Overview of Europe 1300 – 1800
              • Italy: 14th century
              • Italy: 15th century
              • Italy: 16th century
              • Northern Europe: 15th century
              • Northern Europe: 16th century
              • Spain: 15th and 16th century
              • Reformation and Counter-Reformation
              • Baroque: 17th century
              • Rococo: early to mid 18th century
              • Neoclassicism: late 18th century
              • British: 18th century
      • Europe 1800-1900
        • Overview of Europe: 19th century
            • Romanticism
            • Early Photography
            • Victorian art
            • Realism
            • Second Empire
            • Impressionism
            • Post-Impressionism
            • Symbolism / Art Nouveau
            • The Peredvizhniki
      • Oceania
        • Overview of Oceania
            • Lapita
            • Polynesia
            • Melanesia
            • Micronesia
            • Australia
      • Modernisms 1900-1980
        • Overview of Modernisms 1900 – 1980
            • A beginner’s guide
            • Fauvism + Expressionism
            • Cubism + Early Abstraction
            • Dada + Surrealism
            • German art between the wars
            • Latin American modernism
            • American art to WWII
            • Postwar American art
            • Postwar European art
            • Conceptual + Performance art
            • Post Minimalism
            • Global vanguard
            • Architecture + Design
      • Art since 1980
        • Overview of art since 1980
            • Cold War Germany and after
            • Art in the AIDS era
            • Post-Cultural Revolution China
            • Apartheid-era South Africa
            • Young British Artists and art as commodity
            • Pictures Generation and postmodern photography
            • Revisiting histories
            • Mapping and migration
            • Figuration, the body, and representation
            • Social practice
            • Public memory and the politics of place
            • Landscape and ecology
            • Digital culture
            • Assemblage and materiality
            • Spirituality and transcendence
  • Guided learning
      • Start here
          • OVERVIEW
              • Looking at art
              • Approaches to art history
              • Understanding religion in art
              • Understanding museums
              • For the very beginner
              • seeingamericaFeatured | Art that brings U.S. history to life
      • Courses in art history & history
          • OVERVIEW
              • Expanding the Renaissance – shifting the conversation
              • Seeing America – a portal to American history and art
              • ARCHES – At-Risk Cultural Heritage Education Series
              • Short courses – spend an hour — learn a lot!
              • Across cultures – An interconnected world is not as recent as we think.
              • Teaching with images – For K-12 teachers
              • Syllabi / AP & A-level courses
              • Art Appreciation
              • A history of photography
              • Creating + conserving
      • Smarthistory books
        • Overview – More titles coming soon!
            • AP® Art History (vol. 1) – nos. 1 – 47
            • AP® Art History (vol. 2) – nos. 48-98
            • AP® Art History (vol. 3) – nos. 99 – 152
            • AP® Art History (vol. 4) – nos. 153 – 191
            • AP® Art History (vol. 5) – nos. 192 – 250
            • Ancient Near Eastern art
            • Ancient Egyptian Art
            • Ancient Aegean Art
            • Ancient Greek Art
            • Ancient Etruscan art
            • Ancient Roman art
            • Guide to Italian art in the 1300s
      • Virtual visits – museums & sites
        • Overview – art by location
          • Austria
          • China
          • Egypt
          • France
          • Germany
          • Greece
          • Italy
          • India
          • Japan
          • Mexico
          • Netherlands
          • Peru
          • Russia
          • Spain
          • Turkey
          • United Kingdom
          • United States
  • Commons
  • Support
      • Donate – Help Smarthistory continue to make a difference
      • Contribute an essay – Help make art history relevant and engaging
      • We created Smarthistory to provide students around the world with the highest-quality educational resources for art and cultural heritage—for free.
Search

over here

A-level

Visual analysis
Why look at art?
How to do visual (formal) analysis
Describing what you see: Sculpture, Henry Moore's Reclining Figure
Glossary
Painting
Looking at paintings
Ways of looking: Expression and modern art
Key terms + concepts
Chiaroscuro explained
Foreshortening explained
Linear perspective explained
Atmospheric perspective explained
Art Terms in Action—Tint, Shade, and Tone
A brief history of the representation of the body in Western painting
Materials + techniques + processes
Art Terms in Action—Paint
Oil paint
The conservator’s eye—Anselm Kiefer, Bohemia Lies by the Sea
Tempera paint
The conservator's eye—Taddeo Gaddi, Saint Julian
Gold-ground panel painting
Making Green—Tempera versus Oil
Making Purple—The Science of Art
Sculpture
A brief history of the representation of the body in Western sculpture
Contrapposto explained
The conservator's eye—Marble statue of a wounded warrior
Quarrying and carving marble
Carving Marble with Traditional Tools
Bronze Casting Using the "Lost Wax" Technique
Adriaen de Vries's bronze casting technique: direct lost-wax method
Architecture
The Greek architectural orders
Themes
Nature in art and architecture
Specified artists + architects
Albrecht Dürer
About the artist
Woodcuts and engravings
The Large Piece of Turf
Adam and Eve (essay)
Adam and Eve (video)
Browse Dürer on Smarthistory
J.M.W. Turner
Turner at Tate Britain
The Harbor of Dieppe
The Fighting Temeraire
Slave Ship
Snow Storm
Rain, Steam, and Speed — The Great Western Railway
Claude Monet
Impressionism, an introduction
How the Impressionists got their name
Cliff Walk at Pourville
Art and Context—Monet's Cliff Walk at Pourville and Malevich's White on White
Les Nymphéas (The Water Lilies)
Poplars
The Basin at Argenteuil
Browse Monet on Smarthistory
Georgia O'Keeffe
The Lawrence Tree
Giambologna
Abduction of a Sabine Woman
Barbara Hepworth
Sheltered by the sea, Barbara Hepworth's Pelagos
John Nash
Royal Pavilion, Brighton
Antoni Gaudí
Sagrada Família
Frank Lloyd Wright
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City
Non-European works
Hokusai, Under the Wave off Kanagawa (The Great Wave)
Double-headed serpent
Tipu’s Tiger
Ai Weiwei: Sunflower Seeds
Ai Weiwei, Kui Hua Zi (Sunflower Seeds)
Angkor Wat
Subjects, forms, styles
Landscape + seascape
Animals
Plants
The elements
Relationship between wo/man and nature
Architecture influenced by nature
Sample set of works
Identities in art and architecture
Specified artists + architects
Jan van Eyck
The Arnolfini Portrait
The Ghent Altarpiece
The Madonna in the Church
Portrait of a Man in a Red Turban (Self-Portrait?)
Rembrandt
Christ Crucified between the Two Thieves: The Three Crosses
Bathsheba at Her Bath
Self-Portrait with Saskia
Aristotle with a Bust of Homer
Girl at a Window
The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp
The Night Watch
The Jewish Bride
Aristotle with a Bust of Homer
Élisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun
Self-Portrait with her Daughter
Self-Portrait
Madame Perregaux
Vincent van Gogh
Self-Portrait Dedicated to Paul Gauguin
Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear
Browse van Gogh on Smarthistory
Jean-Antoine Houdon
George Washington
Yinka Shonibare
The Swing (After Fragonard)
Marc Quinn
Self
Zaha Hadid
MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts
Non-European works
Liu Chunhua, Chairman Mao en Route to Anyuan
Shirin Neshat, Rebellious Silence, Women of Allah series
Shiva as Lord of the Dance (Nataraja)
Benin Plaques
Michel Tuffery, Pisupo Lua Afe (Corned Beef 2000)
A Buddha from Mathura
Sacred space and symbolic form at Lakshmana Temple, Khajuraho (India)
Subjects, forms, styles
The divine
Portraits in 2D works
Portraits in 3D works
Gender identity
Ethnic identity
Identity in architecture
Sample set of works
War in art and architecture
Specified artists + architects
Eugène Delacroix
Liberty Leading the People
Scene of the Massacre at Chios
The Death of Sardanapalus
Francisco Goya
The Third of May, 1808
And there's nothing to be done from The Disasters of War
Browse Goya on Smarthistory
Pablo Picasso
Guernica
Browse Picasso on Smarthistory
Otto Dix
Art in Nazi Germany
Edward Lutyens
British Art and Literature During WWI
Non-European works
Night Attack on the Sanjô Palace
Haniwa Warrior
Ibrahim El-Salahi, Reborn Sounds of Childhood Dreams
Subjects, forms, styles
War in 2D works
Leaders
Participants in war
Places affected by war
War memorials
Defensive + commemorative architecture
Sample set of works
Periods
Renaissance in Italy
A beginner's guide
Renaissance art basics
How to recognize Italian Renaissance art
Florence in the Early Renaissance
Types of renaissance patronage
Venetian art, an introduction
Toward the High Renaissance, an introduction
A beginner's guide to Mannerism
The Protestant Reformation
Introduction to gender in renaissance Italy
Specified artists
Giovanni Bellini
St. Francis in the Desert (or St. Francis in Ecstasy)
San Zaccaria Altarpiece
San Giobbe Altarpiece
The Feast of the Gods (essay)
The Feast of the Gods (video)
Sandro Botticelli
The Birth of Venus
La Primavera (Spring)
Dissecting Botticelli’s Adoration of the Magi
Portrait of a Man with a Medal of Cosimo il Vecchio de’ Medici
Raphael
Galatea
La belle jardinière (Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist)
Madonna of the Goldfinch
Marriage of the Virgin
Pope Leo X
School of Athens
The Alba Madonna
Portrait of Pope Julius II
Donatello
David
Equestrian Monument of Gattamelata
St. Mark
Mary Magdalene
Feast of Herod
Madonna of the Clouds
Orsanmichele and Donatello's Saint Mark, Florence
Tullio Lombardo
The Conservation of Tullio Lombardo's Adam
Michelangelo
About Michelangelo
David
The many meanings of Michelangelo's David
Pietà
Slaves
Moses
Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
Last Judgment, Sistine Chapel
Saint Peter's Basilica
Medici Chapel (New Sacristy)
Laurentian Library
Studies for the Libyan Sibyl (recto); Studies for the Libyan Sibyl and a small Sketch for a Seated Figure (verso)
Subjects, forms, styles
Religious paintings
Religious sculpture
Mythological works
Portraits
Religious architecture
Secular architecture
Sample set of works
Baroque in Catholic Europe
A beginner's guide
Baroque art, an introduction
How to recognize Baroque art
Francis Bacon and the Scientific Revolution
Specified artists
Caravaggio
Narcissus at the Source
Calling of St. Matthew
The Conversion of St. Paul (or The Conversion of Saul)
Crucifixion of St. Peter
The Supper at Emmaus
Deposition (or Entombment)
Death of the Virgin
Peter Paul Rubens
Elevation of the Cross
The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus
The Presentation of the Portrait of Marie de' Medici
Arrival (or Disembarkation) of Marie de Medici at Marseilles
Venus, Mars and Cupid
The Consequences of War
Diego Velázquez
The Waterseller of Seville
Los Borrachos (The Drunks), also known as The Triumph of Bacchus
Vulcan's Forge
The Surrender of Breda
Juan de Pareja
Las Meninas
Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Pluto and Proserpina (or The Rape of Proserpina)
David
Apollo and Daphne
Baldacchino, Saint Peter's
Bust of Medusa
Ecstasy of Saint Teresa
Cathedra Petri (Chair of St. Peter)
Subjects, forms, styles
Religious painting
Religious sculpture
Mythological painting
Mythological sculpture
Portraits
Landscape
Still life or genre
Religious architecture
Secular architecture
Sample set of works
British and French Avant-Garde
A beginner's guide
Becoming Modern, an introduction
A beginner's guide to Realism
Haussmann the Demolisher and the creation of modern Paris
Impressionism, an introduction
How the Impressionists got their name
Japonisme
Looking east—how Japan inspired Monet, Van Gogh and other Western artists
A beginner's guide to the Pre-Raphaelites
The Aesthetic Movement
Art Nouveau
Specified artists
William Holman Hunt
Claudio and Isabella
Our English Coasts (Strayed Sheep)
The Awakening Conscience
Édouard Manet
Music in the Tuileries Gardens
Olympia
Le déjeuner sur l'herbe (Luncheon on the Grass)
The Railway
Émile Zola
The Balcony
Plum Brandy
In the Conservatory
Corner of a Café-Concert
A Bar at the Folies-Bergère
Paul Gauguin
Self-Portrait with Portrait of Émile Bernard (Les misérables)
Vision after the Sermon (or Jacob Wrestling with the Angel)
Nevermore
The Red Cow
Spirit of the Dead Watching
Oviri
Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?
Edgar Degas
The Bellelli Family
 At the Races in the Countryside
The Dance Class
Visit to a Museum
Auguste Rodin
The Walking Man
The Burghers of Calais
The Gates of Hell
Subjects, forms, styles
Painting of working life
Painting of leisure
Religious painting
Mythological + literary works
The female figure
Commemorative sculpture
Public architecture
Domestic architecture
Sample set of works
Modernism in Europe
A beginner's guide
Expressionism, an introduction
Modern art and reality
Specified artists
Henri Matisse
Luxe, calme et volupté
Bonheur de Vivre
Dance I
The Red Studio
Goldfish
The Piano Lesson
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Self-Portrait As a Soldier
Street, Dresden
Street, Berlin
Georges Braque
Le Viaduc à L'Estaque, (The Viaduct at L'Estaque)
The Portuguese
Constantin Brancusi
The Kiss
Bird in Space
Alberto Giacometti
The Palace at 4 a.m.
Subjects, forms, styles
Urban life
Primitive ideas
The female figure
Portraits
Landscape
Still life
Figure sculpture
Commercial + public architecture
Domestic architecture
Sample set of works
British + American contemporary art + architecture
A beginner's guide
Pop Art
Contemporary Art, an introduction
Specified artists
Andy Warhol
Why is this art? Andy Warhol, Campbell's Soup Cans
Gold Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Diptych
Chris Ofili
The Holy Virgin Mary
Judy Chicago
Omega, and Judy Chicago, Pasadena Lifesaver, Blue Series, Number 4
Mary Kelly
Mary Kelly, Post-Partum Document
Subjects, forms, styles
Portraits
3D objects
Abstraction + non-objective
Figurative work
Performance + video
Installation
Land + earth art
Commercial + public architecture
Domestic architecture
Sample set of works

A-level: Chiaroscuro explained

by Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker

 

Cite this page as: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker, "A-level: Chiaroscuro explained," in Smarthistory, May 23, 2017, accessed October 27, 2021, https://smarthistory.org/chiaroscuro-explained-2/.

Flickr IconBrowse Smarthistory images for teaching & learning! 

Sign up for our newsletter!

Receive occasional emails about new Smarthistory content.

Watch the latest video on

Pablo Picasso's La Vie

a Bank of America Masterpiece Moment

A culminating work of the artist’s Blue Period, La Vie is a poignant statement by a young Picasso mourning the loss of a friend while struggling to understand the meaning of life.

Watch the video
Learn more about Bank of America's Masterpiece Moments Close

Smarthistory is a nonprofit organization

At Smarthistory we believe art has the power to transform lives and to build understanding across cultures. We believe that the brilliant histories of art belong to everyone, no matter their background. Smarthistory’s free, award-winning digital content unlocks the expertise of hundreds of leading scholars, making the history of art accessible and engaging to more people, in more places, than any other provider.

  • Donate
  • Contact Us
facebook icon
twitter icon
instagram icon
youtube icon
flickr icon
  • About Smarthistory
  • Smarthistory’s blog
  • Contribute an essay
  • Content editors and contributors

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

· © 2021 Smarthistory · Powered by · Designed with the Customizr theme ·

over here