levo

Y305: The Renaissance c.1400–c.1600

Artistic and cultural development: cultural conditions in western Europe c.1400

  • 3 things to know
  • Unit group 3

Overview

Recall questions on the cultural conditions in western Europe c.1400, the origins and causes of the Renaissance, social, political, economic and cultural factors, the development of, and changes in, artistic and literary styles and techniques, regional variations in art.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Your recallNot started
Numbers

What was linear perspective and who first demonstrated it?

Key term

Name two technical changes that transformed painting during the period.

Key term

What was distinctive about Venetian painting?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What was cultural life in western Europe like around 1400?

    Model answer

    It was dominated by the Church and by scholastic theology, with Gothic styles in art and architecture, Latin as the language of learning, and manuscripts copied slowly by hand in monasteries and princely courts.

  2. 2

    Give three conditions in the Italian city states that helped cause the Renaissance.

    Model answer

    Wealth from long-distance trade and banking, a large and confident urban middle class, and a fragmented political map in which rival states competed for prestige.

  3. 3

    What was linear perspective and who first demonstrated it?

    Model answer

    Linear perspective was a mathematical method of showing depth on a flat surface using a single vanishing point, demonstrated by Brunelleschi in Florence around 1413 and set out in writing by Alberti.

  4. 4

    Name two technical changes that transformed painting during the period.

    Model answer

    The replacement of egg tempera by oil paint, which allowed deeper colour, glazing and subtle modelling, and the study of human anatomy, which produced convincingly solid and mobile figures.

  5. 5

    How did literary style change under humanist influence?

    Model answer

    Writers imitated classical Latin models such as Cicero, revived the study of Greek, and developed history, biography, dialogue and the letter, while increasingly also writing in the vernacular.

  6. 6

    What distinguished the northern Renaissance in Flanders from Italian art?

    Model answer

    Flemish painters such as Jan van Eyck mastered oil paint to achieve minute realistic detail and dense religious symbolism, rather than the Italian concern with classical form, perspective and the nude.

Other ways to work this

The same content, four other ways.

What is inside Levo

Six ways to work the same material.

1Closed book
2Open book
3Closed book

See a huge jump in your memorisation

Answer cold, learn it, then prove it stuck. Levo tracks the jump between your first attempt and your last.

Y101: Alfred and the Making of England 871–1016
Y102: Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest 1035–1107
Y103: England 1199–1272
Y104: England 1377–1455

Cram a whole paper in one sitting

Sort every topic into what you know and what you do not, then drill only the weak ones.

Franz Ferdinand was shot at in June.
SarajevoBelgradeVienna

Blank Blitz consolidates the facts

Rapid timed gap-fills on the terms and numbers you need to recall without thinking.

AA republic replaced the sultanate.
BThe caliphate was abolished in 1924.
CThe Latin alphabet was adopted.

Build It trains answer structure

Assemble a full-mark answer from its marking points, in the order an examiner wants them.

Simony means the buying and selling of Church office.
TrueFalse

Test It catches misconceptions

Spot the fault in a statement. The traps are the mistakes students actually make.

721941163128510

Brain Breaks between sessions

Short focus games to reset attention, so the next set lands better than the last.

Every question in Y305: The Renaissance c.1400–c.1600, on a schedule.

Attempt a question from memory, write the correct version, then attempt it again. Levo records the jump between your first attempt and your last, and brings each question back on the day you are due to forget it.

Or £46 a year, about £3.83 a month. Cancel anytime.