Visual analysis

What visual analysis is and how to do it#

FoundationPearson Edexcel 9HT0 Paper 1 Section A (visual analysis)DfE GCE History of Art subject content

The elements of visual analysis

Fig. 1The formal elements are the lenses of visual analysis; working through them systematically ensures a complete and structured account of any work.

Visual analysis is the disciplined practice of looking closely at a work of art and translating what you see into precise, ordered language. It is the single most important skill in the subject, because it underlies everything else: you cannot interpret a work's meaning, understand its context or evaluate an interpretation of it without first being able to describe accurately how it looks and how it is made. In Paper 1 Section A this skill is examined directly and in isolation - you are given unseen examples of painting, sculpture and architecture that you have never studied, and you must analyse them cold, with no prior knowledge to fall back on. Everything therefore depends on a reliable method for looking.

The method is to work through the formal elements systematically rather than commenting at random. The core elements are composition (how the whole is arranged), form (the depiction of three-dimensional shape and volume), line, tone (the range from light to dark), colour, space (the illusion of depth), scale (the size of the work and of things within it) and handling or facture (the physical way the medium is worked). A strong analysis moves deliberately through these, so that nothing important is missed and the account has a clear structure. The elements are not a checklist to be ticked but a set of lenses, each of which reveals something about how the work achieves its effect.

Crucially, description must come before interpretation, but it must not stop there. Weak analysis either describes without interpreting ('there is a man on the left in a red coat') or interprets without describing ('the painting is about power'); strong analysis binds the two together, using the visual evidence to support a reading ('the single figure is placed high and central, lit from below and set against a plain dark ground, so that scale, position and lighting all concentrate authority on him'). The discipline is always to say what you see and then what it does - to earn every interpretative claim with visual evidence. This is exactly the movement from AO1-style observation to AO2-style analysis that the examination rewards.

Visual analysis also requires precise vocabulary, because vague words produce vague thinking. 'Nice colours' says nothing; 'a restricted, cool palette of blues and greys, warmed only by a single note of red at the focal point' says a great deal and can be argued from. Learning the specific terms for each element - saturated and muted colour, high-key and low-key tone, linear and painterly handling, symmetrical and asymmetrical balance, and so on - is not pedantry but the acquisition of the tools of thought. The following sections build this vocabulary element by element, but the governing habit is the same throughout: look slowly, name what you see exactly, and reason from it.

Finally, remember that a work of art is a made object with a maker's decisions behind every feature, and analysis is the recovery of those decisions and their effects. Ask of every feature: why is it like this, and what does it do? Why this composition and not another; why this colour here; why this scale? Treating the work as the result of deliberate choices, each producing a visual and expressive effect, turns analysis from passive description into active understanding - and it is this understanding, evidenced from close looking, that a good visual analysis demonstrates.

Worked example

Turning description into analysis

Show the difference between mere description and genuine analysis of the same feature - a single lit figure against a dark ground.

Describe
State what is seen: a single figure occupies the centre of the composition, brightly lit, set against an almost empty dark background.
Name the elements at work
Identify the formal choices: central placement (composition), strong tonal contrast between figure and ground (tone), and the isolation of one figure at large scale (scale).
State the effect
Analyse what these do: the eye is forced immediately to the figure, which is monumentalised and dramatised by isolation and light - the work concentrates all attention and significance on this one presence.
Reach a reading
Interpret from the evidence: the formal means create an effect of solemn importance or drama, so the composition itself asserts the figure's significance before we even ask who it is.

Result: The same feature, first merely described, becomes an analysis once the formal choices are named and their effects reasoned out - the movement from seeing to understanding that visual analysis requires.

Typical mistakes

Describing the subject matter (who and what is shown) while neglecting the formal analysis of how it is shown.
Using vague evaluative words ('beautiful', 'nice colours') instead of precise analytical vocabulary that can be argued from.

Active revision

Take any unfamiliar painting and write a paragraph on each of composition, tone/colour and handling, and for each element state one effect it produces - practising the move from description to analysis.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in History of Art (9HT0) specification (Pearson Edexcel)

Composition, space and scale#

StandardPearson Edexcel 9HT0 Paper 1 Section A (composition)DfE GCE History of Art subject content

The pyramidal composition

Fig. 2The pyramidal (triangular) composition: forms arranged within a stable triangle with a broad base and an apex give a group unity, balance and calm monumentality.

Composition is the arrangement of the parts of a work into a whole, and it is usually the first thing to analyse because it governs how everything else is read. The key questions are: how is the work balanced (symmetrically, giving stability and formality, or asymmetrically, giving movement and tension)? Where is the focal point, and how is the eye led to it and around the work? What underlying geometric structure organises the design - a central axis, a strong diagonal, a circle, a grid? Artists compose deliberately to direct attention and to produce an effect, and identifying the compositional structure is identifying the skeleton on which the work is built.

One of the most important and recurrent compositional structures is the triangular or pyramidal composition, in which the main forms are arranged within an implied triangle, typically with a broad, stable base and an apex near the top. This device, perfected in the Italian Renaissance and used ever since, gives a group unity, balance and calm monumentality: the eye is contained within a stable, self-sufficient shape. Leonardo's grouping of the Virgin, Child and saints, or many a Raphael Madonna, rests on this pyramidal armature. Recognising it lets you explain precisely why such a composition feels so ordered and serene - the geometry itself produces the effect.

Compositions are also organised by proportional systems, of which the most famous is the golden section (a ratio of roughly 1 to 1.618, in which the whole relates to the larger part as the larger part relates to the smaller). Dividing a picture at these points, rather than at the exact centre, has long been felt to produce a pleasing, dynamic balance, and the related 'rule of thirds' places focal points a third of the way in. You need not measure a work to analyse it, but you should be able to observe whether its focal elements sit at the centre (formal, static, iconic) or off-centre (dynamic, naturalistic) and to describe the effect.

Space - the illusion of depth on a flat surface, or the real space a sculpture or building occupies and creates - is the next great compositional concern. In two dimensions, artists suggest depth through overlapping, diminishing scale, placement (higher on the surface reads as further back), aerial perspective (distant things paler, bluer and less distinct) and, above all, linear perspective, the geometric system for projecting three-dimensional space onto a plane (treated fully in the Renaissance topic). Analysing space means asking how deep the picture feels, how that depth is constructed, and to what effect - a shallow, compressed space feels very different from a vast, receding one.

Scale operates at two levels and both matter. First, the actual size of the work: a vast public altarpiece and a tiny private devotional panel demand different analysis, and knowing (or estimating) a work's real dimensions changes how you read it. Second, the relative scale of things within the work: figures made larger for importance (hierarchical scale, common in medieval and non-Western art), or a single dominant figure dwarfing others, or a human figure set against overwhelming nature or architecture. Scale is one of the most direct tools an artist has for signalling importance, drama and relationship, and a good analysis is always alert to it.

Worked example

Analysing a symmetrical, centralised composition

Analyse the effect of a strictly symmetrical composition with a single figure centred beneath a semicircular arch.

Identify the structure
Note the exact bilateral symmetry and the central vertical axis on which the single figure sits, framed by a symmetrical arch above.
Name the effect of symmetry
Symmetry produces stability, order, formality and timelessness - the composition feels fixed and eternal rather than momentary.
Add the centralising devices
Central placement and the framing arch further concentrate all attention on the figure and lend it a hieratic, iconic authority.
Conclude
The composition's geometry - symmetry, central axis, framing - creates an effect of solemn, iconic permanence, appropriate to a sacred or authoritative subject.

Result: The symmetrical, centralised structure is shown to produce stability, formality and iconic authority - an interpretation reasoned directly from the compositional geometry.

Typical mistakes

Treating composition as merely 'where things are' rather than as a deliberate structure directing the eye and producing an effect.
Ignoring the actual size of the work, which fundamentally changes how it functions and is experienced.

Active revision

Choose a figure group and sketch the implied geometric shape that organises it (triangle, circle, diagonal); then write how that structure shapes the mood and the way the eye moves.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for history of art (Department for Education)

Line, tone and colour#

StandardPearson Edexcel 9HT0 Paper 1 Section A (line, tone, colour)DfE GCE History of Art subject content

The colour wheel

Fig. 3The colour wheel: colours opposite each other are complementary (they intensify one another); colours adjacent are analogous (they harmonise). Warm hues sit on one side, cool on the other.

Line is the most basic mark in art and it does far more than outline. Analyse its qualities: is it firm and continuous, giving crisp, controlled contours (a linear style), or broken, sketchy and gestural, giving energy and spontaneity? Is it used descriptively, to define edges and shapes, or expressively, to convey movement and emotion in its own right? A precise, hard contour (as in much Renaissance drawing or Ingres) produces clarity, order and a sense of the intellectual; a loose, agitated line (as in Van Gogh or an Expressionist drawing) produces emotion and immediacy. Even where an artist suppresses line in favour of soft tonal transitions (Leonardo's sfumato), the absence of hard line is itself an analytical point.

Tone (also called value) is the range of lightness and darkness, and it is the principal means by which flat marks are made to describe three-dimensional form. By graduating tone from light to dark across a surface (modelling), the artist creates the illusion of rounded, solid volume - a sphere out of a flat disc. The overall tonal range is expressive too: a work using the full range from brilliant highlight to deep shadow, with strong contrasts (chiaroscuro), is dramatic and sculptural, while a work confined to a narrow band of middle tones is quiet and flat. The most theatrical use of tone, tenebrism, plunges most of the picture into darkness and picks out figures with a shaft of light - the device of Caravaggio, analysed further in the Baroque topic.

Colour is analysed through several distinct properties, and vague talk of 'colour' should always be broken down. Hue is the colour itself (red, blue); saturation (or intensity) is how pure and vivid versus muted and greyed it is; and value is its lightness or darkness. Colour temperature divides hues into warm (reds, oranges, yellows - which advance and energise) and cool (blues, greens, violets - which recede and calm). A work's palette can be broad or restricted, harmonious or clashing, naturalistic or expressive, and each choice has an effect that can be described precisely.

The relationships between colours are governed by the colour wheel, and understanding it sharpens analysis. Complementary colours (opposite on the wheel - red and green, blue and orange, yellow and violet) placed together intensify each other and vibrate, producing energy and contrast; analogous colours (adjacent on the wheel) produce harmony and calm. Local colour is the actual colour of an object; optical colour is how it appears under particular light (the Impressionists' concern); and expressive or symbolic colour departs from the natural altogether for emotional or symbolic effect (the Fauves' violent hues, the traditional blue of the Virgin's robe). Naming which kind of colour use is in play is a hallmark of confident analysis.

In practice, line, tone and colour work together and their balance defines a work's character. A classic distinction, which the art historian Heinrich Wolfflin made central, is between the linear (design built on clear outline and local colour, form defined by line - Botticelli, Raphael) and the painterly (form built from patches of tone and colour without firm outline, edges dissolving - Titian, Rembrandt, the Impressionists). Deciding where a work sits on this spectrum, and analysing how its handling of line, tone and colour places it there, is one of the most powerful single moves in visual analysis.

Worked example

Analysing a restricted palette and strong chiaroscuro

Analyse the use of tone and colour in a work with a dark ground, a restricted earth-toned palette and a single figure lit dramatically.

Analyse the palette
Note the restricted, low-saturation palette of browns, ochres and blacks, warmed by a little red - a sombre, unified range rather than a bright, varied one.
Analyse the tone
Identify strong chiaroscuro: a wide tonal range with a brilliant light falling on the figure against deep surrounding shadow.
State the combined effect
The restricted palette and dramatic lighting together produce gravity, intensity and focus - the figure emerges from darkness as if spotlit, heightening the drama.
Interpret
This handling of tone and colour creates a solemn, theatrical mood and directs all emotional weight onto the illuminated figure.

Result: The restricted, warm palette and strong chiaroscuro are shown to combine into an effect of sombre drama and concentration - colour and tone analysed as expressive means, not just described.

Typical mistakes

Writing about colour only as 'bright' or 'dull' without distinguishing hue, saturation, value and temperature.
Overlooking tone, which is often more fundamental than colour to how a work models form and creates drama.

Active revision

Take a coloured work and identify its palette (broad or restricted, warm or cool, any complementary pairs), then a second work and analyse how tone alone models its forms; compare the effects.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in History of Art (9HT0) specification (Pearson Edexcel)

Handling, facture and the medium#

StandardPearson Edexcel 9HT0 Paper 1 Section A (handling and technique)DfE GCE History of Art subject content

The spectrum of handling

Fig. 4Handling runs from a smooth, blended, invisible touch (polish, illusion, detachment) to a broken, impasto, visible touch (energy, immediacy, the artist's presence).

Handling (or facture) is the physical way the medium has been worked - the character of the actual marks on the surface - and it is one of the most revealing things to analyse, because it registers the artist's touch directly. In painting, handling ranges from smooth, blended and invisible (where no brushstroke can be seen and the surface is like enamel or glass) to broken, thick and emphatic (where every loaded stroke is visible and the paint stands proud of the surface as impasto). The first produces polish, illusion and detachment; the second produces energy, immediacy and the palpable presence of the artist's hand. Between these poles lies every gradation, and locating a work on this scale is a precise analytical act.

Handling is intimately bound up with the medium, because each material has its own possibilities and characteristic marks, and analysis should always take the medium into account. Oil paint can be built up in thick impasto or thinned to transparent glazes, blended seamlessly or dragged in visible strokes - its flexibility is why it dominated European painting for centuries. Fresco, painted into wet plaster, demands rapid, confident work and yields a matte, chalky surface. Watercolour is transparent and luminous, worked from light to dark, unforgiving of correction. Tempera gives a precise, slightly linear finish. Knowing what a medium can and cannot do lets you analyse handling accurately rather than describing effects the material could not produce.

The visible or invisible touch also carries meaning about an artist's intentions and period. For centuries the ideal was often a highly finished surface that concealed the labour and heightened the illusion; the loosening of the brushstroke - already bold in late Titian and Rembrandt, and made a principle by the Impressionists - was a genuine break, asserting that the painting is a made object of paint and that the artist's act of making is part of its meaning. By the twentieth century, in Abstract Expressionism, the gestural mark could become the whole subject. So the degree to which handling is visible is not a neutral fact but a historically loaded choice, and analysing it can place a work and reveal its ambitions.

Surface and handling matter just as much in three dimensions. In sculpture, the treatment of the surface - highly polished marble that reads as smooth flesh, or roughly worked, tool-marked bronze that catches the light - is analysed exactly as facture in painting is. The degree of finish (the licked smoothness of a Canova, the rough modelling of a Rodin) is expressive: smoothness idealises and cools, rough surface animates and warms. Even in architecture, the treatment of materials - dressed ashlar versus rough rustication, exposed concrete versus polished stone - is a handling to be read.

In your analysis, then, always look at the actual surface and ask how it was made and what that does. Describe the marks - are they blended or broken, thin or thick, smooth or rough - name the effect (illusion or immediacy, calm or energy, detachment or presence), and, where you can, connect the handling to the medium and to the artist's evident intention. Handling is where analysis touches the physical reality of the object most directly, and attention to it distinguishes a genuinely observant response from a merely descriptive one.

Worked example

Reading handling as meaning

Explain how the visible, broken brushwork of an Impressionist landscape carries meaning, not just appearance.

Describe the marks
Note the short, separate, visible strokes of bright, often unmixed colour, laid side by side so the surface is a mosaic of touches.
Connect to the medium and method
This is oil paint used rapidly, often outdoors, to register fleeting light - the medium's flexibility making the quick, broken touch possible.
State the effect
The broken handling makes the surface shimmer and vibrate, catching the flicker of light and air, and keeps the painting alive and immediate rather than smooth and finished.
Draw out the meaning
The visible touch also declares that this is paint and a moment of seeing, not a polished illusion - the handling embodies the Impressionist idea that a painting records an act of perception.

Result: The broken brushwork is analysed as both an optical device for catching light and a statement about painting itself - handling read as carrying meaning, the mark of a strong response.

Typical mistakes

Ignoring the physical surface and touch of a work, treating a painting as an image rather than an object of worked material.
Describing handling that a medium cannot produce (for example, thick impasto in a transparent watercolour), through not knowing the medium.

Active revision

Compare two paintings, one with an invisible blended surface and one with visible impasto; describe the marks in each and analyse how the difference in handling changes the effect and meaning.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for history of art (Department for Education)

Analysing sculpture#

StandardPearson Edexcel 9HT0 Paper 1 Section A (sculpture)DfE GCE History of Art subject content

Analysing sculpture

Fig. 5The distinct vocabulary of sculptural analysis: type, material, the balance of mass and void, pose and movement, surface, and the relation to scale, site and the moving viewer.

Sculpture is a three-dimensional art and demands its own analytical vocabulary, because it exists in real space and is experienced by a moving viewer rather than seen all at once. The first distinction to make is between sculpture in the round (free-standing, finished on all sides, meant to be walked around) and relief (attached to a background, projecting from a flat surface - high relief projecting boldly, low relief or bas-relief barely raised). This distinction shapes everything about how a work is experienced: a work in the round offers many viewpoints and a real occupation of space, while a relief is closer to a picture, read frontally, and often narrative.

Material is fundamental to sculptural analysis, and the two great traditional processes give very different results (they are treated technically in the Materials topic). Carving, in marble or stone, is subtractive - the form is cut away from a block - which encourages compact, closed forms and can yield a cool, smooth, idealised surface reading as flesh. Casting, in bronze, is additive and comes from a mould, allowing open, extended, dynamic forms (outstretched limbs that marble could not support) and a warm, reflective, tool-worked surface. Analysing a sculpture should always register its material and how the process has shaped the form and surface.

Mass and space - solid and void - are the sculptor's fundamental means, and the balance between them is deeply expressive. A closed, compact form, with limbs held close and little penetration by space, reads as stable, contained, monumental and self-sufficient; an open form, with space flowing through outstretched limbs and gaps, reads as dynamic, energetic and engaged with its surroundings. The way a sculpture occupies and shapes the space around it - whether it holds a tight silhouette or explodes outward - is often the single most important thing to analyse, and it changes as you move around the work.

Pose, movement and surface complete the analysis. Pose carries enormous meaning: the relaxed, weight-shifted stance of contrapposto (one leg bearing weight, the body in a gentle S-curve), revived from antiquity in the Renaissance, gives lifelike naturalism and ease, whereas a rigid frontal stance gives archaic solemnity, and a violently twisting figure gives drama and energy. Implied movement, the direction of gaze and gesture, and the treatment of surface (highly polished and idealised, or roughly modelled and animated) all contribute. Because sculpture is experienced over time and from many angles, note whether it has one privileged frontal view or rewards being seen from all around.

Finally, analyse sculpture in relation to scale, site and the viewer, since these are part of its meaning in a way even more direct than in painting. A colossal public statue on a high plinth relates to the viewer quite differently from a small bronze held in the hand; a figure designed for a niche is composed for a single frontal view, one for the centre of a piazza for many. The lighting a sculpture receives (real, changing light, unlike a painting's depicted light) models its forms and animates its surface. Attending to how a sculpture's scale, intended location and relation to the moving, embodied viewer shape the experience is what distinguishes sculptural analysis from simply describing a figure.

Worked example

Analysing pose and form in a free-standing figure

Analyse how contrapposto and a relatively closed form shape the reading of a standing marble nude.

Identify the pose
Observe the weight resting on one leg, the hips and shoulders tilting in opposite directions and the body forming a gentle S-curve - the contrapposto revived from antiquity.
Analyse its effect
This weight-shift gives the figure lifelike naturalism, ease and potential movement, replacing archaic rigidity with the appearance of a living, breathing body.
Analyse the form and material
Note the relatively closed, compact form suited to carving in marble, with the smooth, idealised surface making stone read as flesh.
Conclude
Pose, form and surface together produce an effect of idealised, naturalistic humanity - a serene, self-possessed figure, classical in its balance.

Result: Contrapposto, closed carved form and idealised surface are shown to combine into an effect of naturalistic, idealised calm - sculptural analysis reasoned from pose, material and form.

Typical mistakes

Analysing a sculpture as if it were a picture - from one frontal view only - ignoring its three-dimensional occupation of real space.
Neglecting material and process, which shape the possible forms and the surface of a sculpture.

Active revision

Choose a free-standing figure and analyse its pose (weight, contrapposto or not), its balance of open and closed form, and how walking around it changes the experience.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in History of Art (9HT0) specification (Pearson Edexcel)

Analysing architecture#

AdvancedPearson Edexcel 9HT0 Paper 1 Section A (architecture)DfE GCE History of Art subject content

A classical facade

Fig. 6A classical temple-front facade: a symmetrical elevation of columns carrying a horizontal entablature and a triangular pediment - the articulated, proportioned front to analyse for rhythm and order.

Architecture is the third art analysed in Paper 1, and it too has its own vocabulary, because a building is a functional structure, a mass in space and an interior to be moved through, all at once. Analysis usually distinguishes the plan (the layout seen from above - the arrangement of spaces and the path through them), the elevation (the external face or facade), the section (an imagined vertical cut revealing the interior heights and structure), the structure (how the building stands up), and the treatment of space, mass, proportion, materials and ornament. A complete architectural analysis attends to all of these, moving between the outside and the experienced inside.

The facade or elevation is often what an unseen architectural analysis begins with, and it is read much like a composition. Note its symmetry or asymmetry, its proportions, its rhythm (the regular alternation of solids and voids, of window and wall, of column and space), and its articulation - the way elements such as columns, pilasters, string courses, pediments and cornices organise the surface into a legible order. A facade may be flat and planar or deeply modelled and sculptural, calm and regular or restless and dynamic; these qualities are analysed for their effect exactly as in a painting, and they often announce the building's style and purpose.

The classical language of architecture, inherited from Greece and Rome and dominant in European building for centuries, supplies much of the vocabulary you will need (the orders and structural systems are treated technically in the Materials topic). The three orders - Doric (sturdy, plain), Ionic (slenderer, with scrolled volute capitals) and Corinthian (slenderest, with elaborate acanthus-leaf capitals) - are systems of proportion and ornament that set the character of a building, and elements such as the column, the round arch, the pediment and the dome recur across periods. Being able to name these elements, and to recognise when a building uses the classical language faithfully, freely or in reaction against it, is essential to analysing Western architecture.

Space and structure are the deeper subjects of architectural analysis, because architecture is uniquely the art of enclosing and shaping space. Ask how the interior space is organised - is it a single unified volume or a sequence of compartments; is it directional, drawing you along an axis toward a climax (as in a long basilica nave leading to the altar), or centralised, gathering you under a dome? How is the space lit, and how does light shape the experience? And how does the structure make the space possible - the round arch and the vault and dome allowing the spanning of great spaces, the wall carrying the load or, in modern building, a frame freeing the wall from bearing weight? Structure, space and light together create the architectural experience, and analysing their interplay is the heart of the matter.

Finally, architecture must be analysed in relation to function, site and materials, which are inseparable from its form. A church, a palace, a factory and a house are shaped by what they must do, and form and function are always in dialogue - though not always simply, since a building may also express power, faith or ideology beyond its practical use. The materials (stone, brick, concrete, steel, glass) determine what is structurally possible and give the building its texture and character, and the setting - urban or rural, isolated or part of a street - conditions how it is seen. A strong architectural analysis reads the building as a functional structure, an expressive form and a shaped space together, just as a strong painting analysis reads image, object and meaning together.

Worked example

Analysing a symmetrical classical facade

Analyse the effect of a symmetrical classical facade of columns carrying a pediment, approached up a flight of steps.

Read the composition
Note the strict bilateral symmetry, the regular rhythm of evenly spaced columns, and the clear horizontal-and-triangle articulation of entablature and pediment.
Name the language
Identify the classical temple-front vocabulary - columns of a given order, entablature, triangular pediment - carrying associations of antiquity, order and dignity.
Analyse the effect
The symmetry, proportion and regular rhythm produce stability, harmony and monumental dignity; the raised approach up steps adds gravity and elevates the building above the everyday.
Relate to function
Such a dignified, authoritative classical front is typically used to lend seriousness and permanence to an important public or sacred building.

Result: The facade's symmetry, classical articulation and elevated approach are shown to produce an effect of ordered, monumental dignity, appropriate to a public or sacred function - architecture analysed as composition, language and expression together.

Typical mistakes

Analysing only the external facade and forgetting that architecture is above all the shaping of interior space to be moved through.
Failing to name architectural elements precisely (order, pediment, pilaster, vault, dome), producing vague description.

Active revision

Take an unfamiliar building and analyse its facade (symmetry, rhythm, classical elements), then describe how you imagine its interior space is organised and lit, and relate both to its function.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for history of art (Department for Education)

Key points

Turning description into analysis

Key points

Analysing a symmetrical, centralised composition

Key points

Analysing a restricted palette and strong chiaroscuro

Key points

Reading handling as meaning

Key points

Analysing pose and form in a free-standing figure

Key points

Analysing a symmetrical classical facade

Sources

Visual analysis

Key points

Turning description into analysis

Key points

Analysing a symmetrical, centralised composition

Key points

Analysing a restricted palette and strong chiaroscuro

Key points

Reading handling as meaning

Key points

Analysing pose and form in a free-standing figure

Key points

Analysing a symmetrical classical facade

Sources