Analyzing Artworks and Portraits History Essay Paper

ARH 343 midterm exam: please answer both questions and submit your answers via the Blackboard link. Please save a copy of your exam in case there are any technical problems with Blackboard.

1. Earlier this semester, I asked you to read 3 different articles on Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait – by Linda Seidel, Margaret Koster, and Craig Harbison. Each offered a different argument about the meaning and content of this mysterious portrait. Please summarize generally each author’s argument (give no more than four sentences for each summary), and then say which argument you find most convincing and why. This second part (where you say which argument you find most convincing and why) can be as many sentences as you wish. But, as mentioned, you can think of this exam as akin to an in-class exam, and you should write about as much as you’d write for an in-class exam essay question. Feel free to look back at your notes, the textbook, or at the articles, but please use your own words to answer this. Do not summarize the authors’ arguments by repeating their own words or by quoting them at length.

2. The artworks we’ve looked at in this class very often contain details that are incredibly realistic. But we’ve also seen a number of works that present elements that depart dramatically from reality: e.g., unnaturally elongated or large or angular bodies, unnaturalistic backgrounds, odd spatial configurations, unusual colors, impossible poses. Discuss why artists sometimes departed dramatically from reality. How do such departures from reality enrich the meaning of artworks? To answer this, discuss four works, and for each provide no more than five sentences. Feel free to pick whatever examples you prefer from the material we discuss through class on October 8. But some works you might consider discussing include (in Snyder’s textbook): the painting on p. 2 (the Resurrection by the Master of Trebon Altarpiece); figure 2.22 (the Lamentation in the Rohan Hours); figure 2.37 (April in the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry); figure 5.11 (van Eyck’s Madonna in the Church); figure 6.8 (van der Weyden’s Deposition); figure 7.6 (Petrus Christus’s Virgin and Child in a Chamber). Again, these are just suggestions; there are other works you can also pick that are superb examples.