Final exam December7.docx - HIST-214 Introduction to...

HIST-214 Introduction to European History
Final take-home exam
This exam is worth 30% of your final grade. Return a hard copy to Isabel’s office (Ferrier 224) between
12 pm and 6 pm on December 14
th
. Feel free to use your lecture notes, the slides on MyCourses and Lynn
Hunt’s The Making of the West in composing your answers. General information taken from these sources
does not need to be cited (consider it “common knowledge”) but direct quotations or close paraphrases
from the Hunt must be properly footnoted in Chicago style. You are not required to do further research for
this exam, though if you do choose to consult other sources be sure to cite properly.
Part 1: Vocabulary
30% (10% per term)
Define and explain each term in half a page. Give special attention to What, Who, When, Where, Why.
1. Baroque
The term baroque is used to describe an artistic style characteristic of the seventeenth century,
which was expressed through paintings, sculptures, and architecture. This movement departed from the
previous artistic style the Renaissance with its idealism and emphasis on harmonious design, and it
accentuates this departure with exaggerated lighting and curves within the art piece . The term baroque was
not used as a label by the people of the time, it was a term coined by 18 th -century art critics to mean
shocking, confused and bizarre.
1
Baroque art reflects intense emotions and a particular sort of Dionysian
chaos; a release from restraint, and even a kind of artistic sensationalism, meant to evoke drama, tension,
exuberance, and grandeur. Moreover, Baroque art, above all reflected the religious tensions of the
seventeenth century, as the movement can be seen itself as a symptom of the counter-reformation. Its
artistry worked to reaffirm the emotional depths of the Catholic faith, by communicating religious themes
through direct and emotional involvement and was used as a new way of convincing the faithful to return
to the Catholic Church and glorifying both the church and the monarchy. This is especially potent when
compared to the artistry of the protestant world which due to the religious tensions of the age as becoming
increasing secularised.
1 Lynn Hunt, The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2 nd
ed, 2007), 510.
1

The Baroque artistic style spread from Rome to other Catholic European states, where the
monarchs used the art form to promote the Catholic Church and to consolidate their own power. For
example, the Spanish built baroque churches in the American colonies as part of a massive conversion
campaign, hoping that the grandeur and majesty of the churches would draw more people to them. 2
Additionally, the architecture of Louis XIV’s Versailles also shows elements of baroque artistry in its
construction, in the form of his ostentatious exhibition of the possibilities of this power.