Curated Guides > Syllabus > A-level History of Art
A-level History of Art
This guide covers the three core areas of the A-level History of Art evaluation: visual analysis, themes, and periods. A-levels are advanced level qualifications primarily taught and taken in the United Kingdom.
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Museum-goers looking at Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1880–81, oil on canvas, 51.25 x 69.13 inches (The Phillips Collection; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
- Why art matters (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
- 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 in Venice
- 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
- Greek architectural orders
Albrecht Dürer and others, The Triumphal Arch, c. 1515 (Germany), woodcut printed from 192 individual blocks, 357 x 295 cm (© The Trustees of the British Museum, London)
- Specified artists + architects
- Albrecht Dürer
- Who was Albrecht Dürer?
- Albrecht Dürer’s woodcuts and engravings
- Albrecht Dürer, The Large Piece of Turf
- Albrecht Dürer, Adam and Eve
- J.M.W. Turner
- J.M.W. 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
- 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
- Georgia O'Keeffe
- The Lawrence Tree
- Radiator Building—Night, New York
- Giambologna
- Abduction of a Sabine Woman
- Barbara Hepworth
- Pelagos
- John Nash
- John Nash, Royal Pavilion, Brighton
- Antoni Gaudí
- Sagrada Família
- Park Güell
- Frank Lloyd Wright
- Fallingwater
- Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City
- Bachman-Wilson House
- Non-European works
- Katsushika Hokusai, Under the Wave off Kanagawa (The Great Wave)
- Double-headed serpent
- Tipu’s Tiger
- 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
Jan Van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, tempera and oil on wood, 1434, 82.2 x 60 cm (National Gallery, London)
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People, 1830, oil on canvas, 2.6 x 3.25 m (Musée du Louvre, Paris)
- Specified artists + architects
- Eugène Delacroix
- Eugène Delacroix, an introduction
- 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
- Pablo Picasso
- Guernica
- Otto Dix
- Art in Nazi Germany
- Edward Lutyens
- British Art and Literature During World War I
- 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
Michelangelo, The Creation of Adam, Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, 1508–12, fresco (Vatican City, Rome; photo: Jörg Bittner Unna, CC BY 3.0)
- A beginner's guide
- 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
- Mannerism, an introduction
- 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
- Sandro Botticelli
- The Birth of Venus
- La Primavera (Spring)
- Adoration of the Magi
- Portrait of a Man with a Medal of Cosimo il Vecchio de’ Medici
- Raphael
- Raphael, an introduction
- 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
- Who was Michelangelo?
- 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
- Subjects, forms, styles
- Religious paintings
- Religious sculpture
- Mythological works
- Portraits
- Religious architecture
- Secular architecture
- Sample set of works
Peter Paul Rubens, Elevation of the Cross, from Saint Walburga, 1610, oil on wood, center panel: 15′ 1-7/8″ x 11′ 1-1/2″ (now in Antwerp Cathedral)
- 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 Saint 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), or 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 Saint 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
Édouard Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, 1882, oil on canvas, 96 x 130 cm (Courtauld Gallery, London)
- A beginner's guide
- Becoming modern in 19th-century Europe, 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
- William Holman Hunt, Claudio and Isabella
- William Holman Hunt, Our English Coasts (Strayed Sheep)
- William Holman Hunt, 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
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Reclining Nude in Front of Mirror, 1909–10, oil on canvas, 83.3 x 95.5 cm (Brücke-Museum, Berlin)
- 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
- 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
Left: Roy Lichtenstein, Girl with a Ball, 1961, oil on canvas, 60 1/4 x 36 1/4" (153 x 91.9 cm) (Museum of Modern Art, New York); right: Detail of face showing Lichtenstein's painted Benday dots
- A beginner's guide
- Pop Art
- Contemporary art, an introduction
- Specified artists
- Andy Warhol
- Campbell’s Soup Cans
- Gold Marilyn Monroe
- Marilyn Diptych
- Chris Ofili
- The Holy Virgin Mary
- Judy Chicago
- The Dinner Party
- 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
