The classical orders. A typical example of the composite order is depicted in the bottom row to the right.

A classical order is one of the ancient styles of classical architecture, each distinguished by its proportions and characteristic profiles and details, and most readily recognizable by the type of column employed. Three ancient orders of architecture—the Doric,Ionic, and Corinthian—originated in Greece.

Henri Moore - (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English sculptor and artist. He was best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art.  

Biomorphic Form - "refer to, or evoke, living forms...". Sculptors include Joan Miró, Jean Arp, Henry Moore, and Barbara Hepworth.  The paintings of Yves Tanguy and Roberto Mattaare also often cited as exemplifying the use of biomorphic form.

Polychrome Entablature on Doric Column

Polychrome is one of the terms used to describe the use of multiple colors in one entity. It has also been defined as "The practice of decorating architectural elements, sculpture, etc., in a variety of colors." ^[1]

Circassian dolmen near the Zhane river, Russia

         A dolmen, also known as a portal tomb, portal grave, or quoit, is a type of single-chamber megalithic tomb, usually consisting of three or more upright stones supporting a large flat horizontal capstone (table). Most date from the early Neolithic period (4000 to 3000 BC). Dolmens were usually covered with earth or smaller stones to form a barrow, though in many cases that covering has weathered away, leaving only the stone "skeleton" of the burial mound intact.

Powdered gum arabic for artists, one part gum arabic is dissolved in four parts distilled water to make a liquid suitable for adding to pigments.

           In lithography, the gum etch is used to etch the most subtle gray tones. Phosphoric acid is added in varying concentrations to the acacia gum to etch the darker tones up to dark blacks. Multiple layers of gum are used after the etching process to build up a protective barrier that ensures the ink does not fill into the whitespace of the image being printed.

           Acacia gum (gum arabic) is used as a binder for watercolor painting 

The camera obscura (Latin; "camera" is a "vaulted chamber/room" + "obscura," "dark" = "darkened chamber/room"; plural: camera obscuras or camerae obscurae) is an optical device that projects an image of its surroundings on a screen. It is used in drawing and for entertainment, and was one of the inventions that led to photography. The device consists of a box or room with a hole in one side. Light from an external scene passes through the hole and strikes a surface inside where it is reproduced, upside-down, but with color and perspective preserved. 

Le Wagon de troisième classe(The third-class wagon), 1864

      Honoré Daumier (February 26, 1808 – February 10, 1879) was a French printmaker, caricaturist, painter, and sculptor, whose many works offer commentary on social and political life in France in the 19th century

Ancient Egyptian cartouche of Thutmose III, Karnak, Egypt.

In Egyptian hieroglyphs, a cartouche is an oval with a horizontal line at one end, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name, coming into use during the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty under Pharaoh Sneferu, replacing the earlier serekh. While the cartouche is usually vertical with a horizontal line, it is sometimes horizontal if it makes the name fit better, with a vertical line on the left.^[1]

"The sleep of Reason Creates Monsters", etching and aquatint by Francisco Goya

Etching prints are generally linear and often contain fine detail and contours. Lines can vary from smooth to sketchy. An etching is opposite of a woodcut in that the raised portions of an etching remain blank while the crevices hold ink. In pure etching, a metal (usually copper, zinc or steel) plate is covered with a waxy or acrylic ground. The artist then draws through the ground with a pointed etching needle. The exposed metal lines are then etched by dipping the plate in a bath of etchant (e.g. nitric acid or ferric chloride).

The art deco spire of the Chrysler Building in New York City, built 1928–1930

At its best, art deco represented elegance, glamour, functionality and modernity. Art deco's linear symmetry was a distinct departure from the flowing asymmetrical organic curves of its predecessor style art nouveau; it embraced influences from many different styles of the early twentieth century, including neoclassical, constructivism, cubism, modernism and futurism^[5] and drew inspiration from ancient Egyptian and Aztec forms. Although many design movements have political or philosophical beginnings or intentions, art deco was purely decorative.^[6]

Art Nouveau (French pronunciation: [aʁ nuvo], Anglicised to /ˈɑːrt nuːˈvoʊ/) is an international philosophy^[1] and style of art, architecture andapplied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910.^[2] The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"

Although Art Nouveau was replaced by 20th-century modernist styles,^[10] it is considered now as an important transition between the historicism of Neoclassicism and modernism

"The Musician", oil on canvasby Tamara de Lempicka, 1929, 

Art-deco design influences were expressed in the crystalline and faceted forms of decorative Cubism and Futurism.^[18][18] Other popular themes of Art Deco were trapezoidal, zigzagged, geometric, and jumbled shapes

The structure of Art Deco is based on mathematical geometric shapes.^[14] It was widely considered to be an eclectic form of elegant and stylish modernism, being influenced by a variety of sources.

Morris & Company Weaving at Merton Abbey

Arts and Crafts was an international design movement that flourished between 1860 and 1910, especially in the second half of that period,^[1] continuing its influence until the 1930s.^[2] It was led by the artist and writer William Morris (1834–1896) and the architect Charles Voysey (1857–1941)

          It was largely a reaction against the impoverished state of the decorative arts at the time and the conditions in which they were produced.^[4] It stood for traditional craftsmanship using simple forms and often applied medieval, romantic or folk styles of decoration. It advocated economic and social reform and has been said to be essentially anti-industrial.

Ashcan School artists, c. 1896, l to r,Everett Shinn, Robert Henri, John French Sloan

The Ashcan School, also called the Ash Can School, is defined as a realist artistic movement that came into prominence in the United States during the early twentieth century, best known for works portraying scenes of daily life in New York's poorer neighborhoods.

17th century Central Tibetan thanka (silk painting) of Guhyasamaja Akshobhyavajra, Rubin Museum of Art.  

An aureola or aureole (diminutive of Latin aurea, "golden") is the radiance of luminous cloud which, in paintings of sacred personages, surrounds the whole figure. In the earliest periods of Christian art it was confined to the figures of the persons of the Christian Godhead, but it was afterwards extended to the Virgin Mary and to several of the saints. When enveloping the whole body, it generally appears oval or elliptical in form, but occasionally depicted as circular, vesica piscis, or quatrefoil. When it appears merely as a luminous disk round the head, it is called specifically a halo or nimbus, while the combination of nimbus and aureole is called a glory. The strict distinction between nimbus and aureole is not commonly maintained, and the latter term is most frequently used to denote the radiance round the heads of saints, angels or Persons of the Trinity.

Duchamp's "Fountain" 1917

Avant-garde represents a pushing of the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or the status quo, primarily in the cultural realm. The notion of the existence of the avant-garde is considered by some to be a hallmark of modernism, as distinct from postmodernism. Many artists have aligned themselves with the avant-garde movement and still continue to do so, tracing a history from Dada through theSituationists to postmodern artists such as the Language poets around 1981.

The Gleaners. Jean-François Millet. 1857. Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

The Barbizon school of painters were part of an art movement towards Realism in art, which arose in the context of the dominant Romantic Movement of the time. The Barbizon school was active roughly from 1830 through 1870. It takes its name from the village of Barbizon, France, near Fontainebleau Forest, where the artists gathered. Some of the most prominent features of this school are its tonal qualities, color, loose brushwork, and softness of form.^[1]

Peter Paul Rubens "The Adoration of the Magi" 17th century

      Most important and major painting during the period beginning around 1600 and continuing throughout the 17th century, and into the early 18th century is identified today as Baroque painting. Baroque art is characterized by great drama, rich, deep color, and intense light and dark shadows. As opposed to Renaissance art, which usually showed the moment before an event took place, Baroque artists chose the most dramatic point, the moment when the action was occurring:Michelangelo, working in the High Renaissance, shows his David composed and still before he battles Goliath; Bernini's baroque David is caught in the act of hurling the stone at the giant. Baroque art was meant to evoke emotion and passion instead of the calm rationality that had been prized during the Renaissance.

       Among the greatest painters of the Baroque period are Caravaggio,^[4] Rembrandt,^[5] Rubens,^[6] Velázquez, Poussin,^[7] andVermeer.^[8]

Flying buttresses at Bath Abbey, Bath,England. Of the six seen here, the left hand five are supporting the nave, and the right hand one is supporting the transept. Notice their shadows cast on the windows.

Le bonheur de vivre (1905-6), oil on canvas, 175 x 241 cm., (69 in × 95 in)

Matisse's own response to the hostility his work had met with in the Salon d'Automne of 1905, a response that entrenched his art even more deeply in the esthetic principles that had governed his Fauvist paintings which had caused a furor and which did so on a far grander scale, too.

"Apocalypse," & "Bible of the Poor" - Block Book.

Block books are short books, 50 or fewer leaves, that were printed in the second half of the 15th century from wood blocks in which the text and illustrations were both cut.

A diagram of a burin showing its component parts: the handle, shaft, cutting tip and face.^[1]

     Burin from the French burin meaning "cold chisel"^[2] has two specialised meanings for types of tools in English, one meaning a steel cutting tool which is the essential tool of engraving, and the other, in archaeology, meaning a special type of lithic flake with a chisel-like edge which was probably also used for engraving, or for carving wood or bone.

     An engraving burin is used predominantly by intaglio engravers, but also by relief printmakers in making wood engravings. Its older English name, still often used, is graver. The burin consists of a rounded handle shaped like a mushroom, and a tempered steel shaft, coming from the handle at an angle, and ending in a very sharp cutting face.

     In use, it is typically held at approximately a 30 degree angle to the surface. The index and middle finger typically guide the shaft, while the handle is cradled in the palm.

The most famous of the surviving Byzantine mosaics of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople - the image of Christ Pantocrator on the walls of the upper southern gallery.

Byzantine art is the term commonly used to describe the artistic products of the Byzantine Empire from about the 5th century until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453.

The term can also be used for the art of Eastern Orthodox states which were contemporary with the Byzantine Empire and were culturally influenced by it, without actually being part of it 

Calder room at National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

In addition to mobile and "stabile" sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys,tapestry, jewelry and household objects.

A caryatid from the Erechtheion, standing in contrapposto, displayed at the British Museum

Contrapposto is an Italian term that means counterpose. It is used in the visual arts to describe a human figure standing with most of its weight on one foot so that its shoulders and arms twist off-axis from the hips and legs. This gives the figure a more dynamic, or alternatively relaxed appearance. It can also be used to refer to multiple figures which are in counter-pose (or opposite pose) to one another. It can further encompass the tension as a figure changes from resting on a given leg to walking or running upon it (so-calledponderation). Contrapposto is less emphasized than the more sinuous S Curve.

Giovanni Baglione. Sacred and Profane Love. 1602–1603, showing dramatic compositional chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro (English pronunciation: /kiˌɑːrəˈskjʊəroʊ/, Italian: [kjarosˈkuːro] "light-dark") in art is "an Italian term which literally means 'light-dark'. In paintings the description refers to clear tonal contrasts which are often used to suggest the volume and modelling of the subjects depicted".^[1]

Classical Art - The arts of ancient Greece have exercised an enormous influence on the culture of many countries all over the world, particularly in the areas of sculpture and architecture. In the West, the art of the Roman Empire was largely derived from Greek models. In the East,Alexander the Great's conquests initiated several centuries of exchange between Greek, Central Asian and Indian cultures, resulting inGreco-Buddhist art, with ramifications as far as Japan. Following the Renaissance in Europe, the humanist aesthetic and the high technical standards of Greek art inspired generations of European artists. Well into the 19th century, the classical tradition derived from Greece dominated the art of the western world.

Bronze Sculpture, thought to be either Poseidon or Zeus,c. 460 BCE

Byzantine cloisonné enamel plaque of St. Demetrios, c. 1100, using the new thin-wire technique. The lettering uses champlevé technique.

Cloisonné is an ancient technique for decorating metalwork objects, in recent centuries using vitreous enamel, and in older periods also inlays of cut gemstones, glass, and other materials. The resulting objects can also be called cloisonné.

Ming Dynasty cloisonné enamel bowl, using nine colors of enamel.

      In the Byzantine Empire techniques using thinner wires were developed to allow more pictorial images to be produced, mostly used for religious images and jewellery, and now always using enamel. By the 14th century this enamel technique had spread to China, where it was soon used for much larger vessels such as bowls and vases; the technique remains common in China to the present day, and cloisonné enamel objects using Chinese-derived styles were produced in the West from the 18th century.

Christian Bible as codex

A codex (Latin caudex for "trunk of a tree" or block of wood, book; plural codices) is a book in the format used for modern books, with multiple quires or gatherings (sheets of paper or vellum in multiples of two which are folded and stitched through) typically bound together and given a cover.

Louvre Facade East

In Classical architecture, a giant order (also known as colossal order) is an order whose columns or pilastersspan two (or more) stories. At the same time, smaller orders may feature in arcades or window and door framings within the storeys that are embraced by the giant order.

David, by Michelangelo. The shoulders of the figure are seen to angle in one direction, the pelvis in another.

Classical contrapposto was revived in the Renaissance by the Italian artists Donatello and Leonardo da Vinci, followed by Michelangelo, Raphael and other artists of the High Renaissance. One of the major achievements of the Italian Renaissance was the re-discovery of contrapposto, although in Mannerism it became greatly over-used.

French Gothic diptych, 25 cm (9.8 in) high, with crowded scenes from the Life of Christ, c.1350-1365.

The opposite of relief sculpture is counter-relief, intaglio, or cavo-rilievo,^[3] where the form is cut into the field or background rather than rising from it; this is very rare in monumental sculpture.

Sumerian inscription in monumental archaic style, c. 26th century BC

Cuneiform script^[1] is one of the earliest known forms of written expression. Emerging in Sumer around the 30th century BC, with predecessors reaching into the late 4th millennium (the Uruk IV period), cuneiform writing began as a system of pictographs.

Delacroix, Lithograph, Mephistopheles flying over Wittenberg, 1828

            Lithography uses simple chemical processes to create an image. For instance, the positive part of an image is a water-repelling ("hydrophobic") substance, while the negative image would be water-retaining ("hydrophilic"). Thus, when the plate is introduced to a compatible printing ink and water mixture, the ink will adhere to the positive image and the water will clean the negative image. This allows a flat print plate to be used, enabling much longer and more detailed print runs than the older physical methods of printing (e.g.,intaglio printing, letterpress printing).

Woman in Cafe, drypoint by Lesser Uryshowing the typical rich blurred line of drypoint.

Drypoint is a printmaking technique of the intaglio family, in which an image is incised into a plate (or "matrix") with a hard-pointed "needle" of sharp metal or diamond point. Traditionally the plate was copper, but now acetate, zinc, or plexiglas are also commonly used. Like etching, drypoint is easier for an artist trained in drawing to master than engraving, as the technique of using the needle is closer to using a pencil than the engraver's burin.

Madonna and Child by Duccio, tempera and gold on wood, 1284, Siena

Tempera, also known as egg tempera, is a permanent fast-drying painting medium consisting of colored pigment mixed with a water-soluble binder medium (usually a glutinous material such as egg yolk or some other size). Tempera also refers to the paintings done in this medium. Tempera paintings are very long lasting, and examples from the 1st centuries AD still exist. Egg tempera was a primary method of painting until after 1500 when it was superseded by the invention of oil painting.

Engraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing images on paper as prints or illustrations; these images are also called engravings.

Engraving was a historically important method of producing images on paper, both in artistic printmaking, and also for commercial reproductions and illustrations for books and magazines. It has long been replaced by various photographic processes in its commercial applications and, partly because of the difficulty of learning the technique, is much less common in printmaking, where it has been largely replaced by etching and other techniques.

Artists Sketching in the White Mountains(1868) by Winslow Homer.

En plein air (French pronunciation: [ɑ̃ plɛn‿ɛʁ]) is a French expression which means "in the open air", and is particularly used to describe the act of painting outdoors, which is also called peinture sur le motif ("painting on the ground") in French.

Artists have long painted outdoors, but in the mid-19th century working in natural light became particularly important to the Barbizon school and Impressionism.

The Hundred Guilder Print, c.1647-1649. Etching, Drypoint, Burin

     A burr is a raised edge or small pieces of material remaining attached to a workpiece after a modification process.[1]

     It is usually an unwanted piece of material and when removed with a deburring tool in a process called 'deburring'. Burrs are most commonly created after machining operations, suchas grinding, drilling, milling, engraving, or turning.

     In the printmaking technique of drypoint, burr, which gives a rich fuzzy quality to the engraved line, is highly desirable—the great problem with the drypoint medium is that the burr rapidly diminishes after as few as ten impressions are printed.

Fan vaulting over the nave at Bath Abbey, Bath, England. Made from local Bath stone 1600's

A fan vault is a form of vault used in the Gothic style, in which the ribs are all of the same curve and spaced equidistantly, in a manner resembling a fan. The initiation and propagation of this design element is strongly associated with England.

Fayum mummy portrait of a Roman woman.

Encaustic painting, also known as hot wax painting, involves using heated beeswax to which colored pigments are added. The liquid/paste is then applied to a surface—usually prepared wood, though canvas and other materials are often used. The simplest encaustic mixture can be made from adding pigments to beeswax, but there are several other recipes that can be used — some containing other types of waxes, damar resin, linseed oil, or other ingredients. Pure, powdered pigments can be used, though some mixtures use oil paints or other forms of pigment.

Satire on false perspective by Hogarth

Satire on False Perspective is the title of an engraving produced by William Hogarth in 1754 for his friend John Joshua Kirby's pamphlet on linear perspective.

The intent of the work is clearly given by the subtitle:

Whoever makes a DESIGN without the Knowledge of PERSPECTIVE will be liable to such Absurdities as are shewn in this Frontiſpiece

Franz Kline Painting Number 2, 1954

Calligraphic Expressionism - Dripping or pouring paint onto a canvas

Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913

     Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasized and glorified themes associated with contemporary concepts of the future, including speed, technology, youth and violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane and the industrial city.

     In 1912 and 1913, Boccioni turned to sculpture to translate into three dimensions his Futurist ideas. InUnique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913) he attempted to realise the relationship between the object and its environment, which was central to his theory of "dynamism". 

Gothic Ribbed Vault: 

Voûte de l'église Saint-Séverin à Paris

The intersection of two or three barrel vaults produces a rib vault or ribbed vault when they are edged with an armature of piped masonry often carved in decorative patterns

El baile de San Antonio de la Florida, 1791–1792

One of Francisco Goya's 63 large tapestry cartoons (Spanish: cartones para tapices).  Goya's cartoons were painted on commission for Charles III of Spain and later Charles IV of Spain between 1775 and 1791 to hang in the San Lorenzo de El Escorial and El Pardo palaces. The word cartoon is derived from the Italian cartone, which describes a large sheet of paper used in preparation for a later painting or tapestry.^[1]

Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, Pieter Bruegel the Elder,     

     Grisaille  is a term for painting executed entirely in monochrome or near-monochrome, usually in shades of grey. It is particularly used in large decorative schemes in imitation of sculpture. Many grisailles in fact include a slightly wider colour range.  Paintings executed in brown are sometimes referred to by the more specific term brunaille, and paintings executed in green are sometimes called verdaille.

     A grisaille may be executed for its own sake, as underpainting for an oil painting (in preparation for glazing layers of colour over it), or as a model for an engraver to work from. "Rubens and his school sometimes use monochrome techniques in sketching compositions for engravers."

Lorenzo Ghiberti's cast gilt-bronze "Gates of Paradise" at the Baptistery, Florence combine high-relief main figures with backgrounds mostly in low relief.

Relief is a sculptural technique. The term relief is from the Latin verb levo, to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is thus to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the backgroundplane. What is actually performed when a relief is cut in from a flat surface of stone or wood is a lowering of the field, leaving the unsculpted parts seemingly raised. 

American scene painting refers to a naturalist style of painting and other works of art of the 1920s through the 1950s in the United States. American scene painting is also known as Regionalism.

Edward Hopper (July 22, 1882 – May 15, 1967) was a prominent American realist painter and printmaker. While he was most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching. Both in his urban and rural scenes, his spare and finely calculated renderings reflected his personal vision of modern American life.^[1]

The Cathedral and former Great Mosque of Córdoba, prayer hall.

The hypostyle hall has a roof which is supported by columns, as in the Great Hypostyle Hall at Karnak.   

The double arches were a new introduction to architecture, permitting higher ceilings than would otherwise be possible with relatively low columns. The double arches consist of a lower horseshoe arch and an upper semi-circular arch.  The famous alternating red and whitevoussoirs of the arches were inspired by those in the Dome of the Rock.

In the strictest definition of illuminated manuscript, only manuscripts with gold or silver, like this miniature of Christ in Majesty from the Aberdeen Bestiary (a compendium of beasts, 12th century), would be considered illuminated.

An illuminated manuscript is a manuscript in which the text is supplemented by the addition of decoration, such as decoratedinitials, borders (marginalia) and miniature illustrations. The term is now used to refer to any decorated or illustrated manuscript from the Western traditions.

Lucian Freud, Self-Portrait

Impasto most commonly refers to a technique used in painting, where paint is laid on an area of the surface (or the entire canvas) very thickly, usually thickly enough that the brush or painting-knife strokes are visible. Paint can also be mixed right on the canvas. When dry, impasto provides texture, the paint appears to be coming out of the canvas.

Entablature of the Ionic order

The Ionic order of entablature adds the fascia in the architrave, which are flat horizontal protrusions, and the dentils under the cornice, which are tooth-like rectangular block moldings.

A kouros (plural kouroi, Ancient Greek κοῦρος) is the modern term^[1] given to those representations of male youths which first appear in the Archaic period in Greece. The term kouros, meaning (male) youth, was first proposed for what were previously thought to be depictions of Apollo by V. I. Leonardos in 1895 in relation to the youth from Keratea,^[2] and adopted by Lechat as a generic term for the standing male figure in 1904.

The female sculptural counterpart of the Kouros is the Kórē or Koúrē (Plural: Korai or Koúrai).

Jeff Koons' Michael Jackson and Bubbles, 1988

Kitsch (English pronunciation: /ˈkɪtʃ/, loanword from German) is a form of art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art or a worthless imitation of art of recognized value. The concept is associated with the deliberate use of elements that may be thought of as cultural icons^[1] while making cheap mass-produced objects that are unoriginal.

View of Toledo (c. 1596–1600, oil on canvas) Painted in a Mannerist (or Baroque) style, the work takes liberties with the actual layout of Toledo

El Greco (1541 – 7 April 1614) was a painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance (15th/16th cen. - new focus in art, literature and science, inspired by Classical antiquity and especially the Greco-Roman tradition, receives the transcendental impulse in this year by various successive historical events)

The Last Judgment is a canonical fresco by the Italian Renaissance master Michelangelo executed on the altarwall of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. The work took four years to complete and was done between 1536 and 1541 (preparation of the altar wall began in 1535.) Michelangelo began working on it some twenty years after having finished the Sistine Chapel ceiling

Fresco (plural either frescos or frescoes) is any of several related mural painting types, executed on plaster on walls, ceilings or any other type of flat surface.

Da Vinci's Virgin on the Rocks

Aerial perspective or atmospheric perspective refers to the effect the atmosphere has on the appearance of an object as it is viewed from a distance. As the distance between an object and a viewer increases, the contrast between the object and its background decreases, and the contrast of any markings or details within the object also decreases. The colours of the object also become less saturated and shift towards the background color, which is usually blue, but under some conditions may be some other color (for example, at sunrise or sunset distant colors may shift towards red).