Deck 21: The Secular Baroque in the North: The Art of Observation

Question 1

What requirement did the Dutch state place on people in public service?

A)Be a graduate of a Dutch university
B)Not be involved in tulip investing
C)Not be of Spanish descent
D)Be a member of the Dutch Reformed Church

Answer 1

D

Question 2

Why was portraiture especially popular with the middle-class seventeenth-century Dutch?

A)Physical connection to their ancestors
B)Only art acceptable to Dutch Reformed Church
C)Affirmation of their financial well-being
D)Expression of their dislike for lavish Baroque art

Answer 2

C

Question 3

Why in 1637 did the Dutch economy come close to collapse?

A)Widespread flooding of tulip fields
B)Frenzied speculation in tulip futures
C)Rampant virus in tulip crop
D)inflation caused by tulip craze

Answer 3

B

Question 4

What do most of Jan Vermeer's 34 painting depict?

A)The symmetry of Dutch domestic architecture
B)A moment in the domestic world of women
C)National pride in Dutch land reclamation
D)A civic institution's membership at a particular time

Question 5

What creates the "broken" tulip,so highly valued by the seventeenth-century Dutch?

A)A virus
B)Cross-breeding
C)A mutation
D)A fungus

Question 6

According to Descartes,what was God?

A)Pure love and total acceptance
B)The mover of the universe
C)The mathematical order of nature
D)The determiner of a person's destiny

Question 7

Why were the Catholic and the Protestant Churches opposed to Kepler's and Galileo's heliocentric theory?

A)For contradicting certain biblical passages
B)For resembling the pagan myths about Apollo
C)For challenging belief in God as creator
D)For implying the existence of other solar systems

Question 8

What manner of inquiry did Francis Bacon advocate?

A)Dialectic method
B)Deductive reasoning
C)Cartesian method
D)Empirical method

Question 9

From where did Europe receive the first load of tulip bulbs?

A)China
B)India
C)Turkey
D)The Congo

Question 10

What is the meaning of the Dutch word landschap,from which "landscape" derives?

A)Flat
B)Land form
C)Farm
D)Geography

Question 11

What manner of inquiry did René Descartes advocate?

A)Dialectic method
B)Deductive reasoning
C)Inductive reasoning
D)Empirical method

Question 12

Which of the following is not one of Bacon's four major categories of false notion?

A)Idols of the Market Place
B)Idols of the Theater
C)Idols of the Tribe
D)Idols of the King

Question 13

Why did Johannes Goedaert paint a broken and empty nautilus shell beside the vase in his Flowers in a Wan-li Vase with Blue-Tit?

A)To emphasize the exotic origin of the Ming vase
B)To symbolize worldly wealth,vanity,and mortality
C)To balance the bird on the canvas's other side
D)To parallel the shape of the tulips' open blooms

Question 14

Which of the following is not a contradiction of seventeenth-century Amsterdam residents?

A)Advocated harmony among others,viciously warred with the Spanish
B)Avidly collected art for homes,banned art in churches
C)Intolerant of religious heresy among Protestants,tolerant of Catholics and Jews
D)Obsessed with acquisition of material goods,rigidly austere in religious life

Question 15

What might the pearls In Vermeer's Woman with a Pearl Necklace represent?

A)Wealth
B)Foreign trade
C)Purity
D)Greed

Question 16

Why in 1618 were some members expelled from the Dutch Reformed Church and even imprisoned?

A)Belief that good deeds could overcome predestination
B)Refusal to convert from Calvinism to Dutch Reformed
C)Belief that predestination was independent of faith
D)Refusal to remove religious art from their churches

Question 17

What branch of mathematics did Descartes found?

A)Homological algebra
B)Finite mathematics
C)Calculus
D)Analytic geometry

Question 18

According to Francis Bacon,what were the greatest obstacles to human understanding?

A)Lack of education and superstition
B)Superstition and religion
C)Religion and prejudice
D)Prejudice and superstition

Question 19

Of what does a vanitas painting remind the viewer?

A)To avoid the pleasures of everyday life
B)To appreciate the beauty in nature
C)To focus on the spiritual,not the material
D)To enjoy the pleasures of everyday life

Question 20

Why did the Dutch rebel against the Spanish in 1567?

A)The Spanish armada blockaded Amsterdam's port
B)Philip II transferred the Spanish banking from Amsterdam to Madrid
C)The Spanish opened the dikes,flooding the Dutch farmland
D)Philip II reorganized their churches under Catholic hierarchy

Question 21

Matching

Question 22

Why was Rembrandt so interested in self-portraiture?

A)He wished to emulate Albrecht Dürer's self-portrait
B)He suffered from an excess of vanity
C)He aimed to document the changes age brought
D)His own face provided the ideal practice subject

Question 23

In The Anatomy Lesson of Dr.Tulp,why does Rembrandt illuminate the cadaver?

A)To evoke the executed man's similarity to Christ
B)To enable the viewer to see the anatomical detail
C)To highlight the impossibility of resurrection
D)To draw the viewer's eye to the painting's center

Question 24

Describe the development,beliefs,and appearance of the Dutch Reformed Church.

Question 25

In The Little Street why does Vermeer include a half-whitewashed wall and a mortar-filled cracked façade?

A)To show the tensions of domestic life
B)To symbolize Protestants and Catholic division
C)To emphasize the differences between two houses
D)To acknowledge the disparity between classes

Question 26

List and describe three of the most popular subjects of Dutch artists.

Question 27

Why in 1656 was Rembrandt forced to declare bankruptcy?

A)His wife's poor health created massive debt
B)He had a gambling problem
C)His paintings proved unpopular and did not sell
D)He was notorious for living beyond his means

Question 28

Why can Bach's fugues be viewed as sublime examples of Cartesian rationalism?

A)Their multiple instruments
B)Their blending of words and strings
C)Their single thematic idea
D)Their mathematical clarity

Question 29

Summarize the frenzied speculation in tulip bulbs known as "Tulipomania," including its effects on the Dutch economy and the people.

Question 30

Why can Rembrandt's late work Slaughtered Ox be viewed as optimistic?

A)Soft light falls on the animal's carcass
B)The carcass suggests a feast to come
C)The crucifixion pose implies redemption
D)The maid in the doorway represents the Virgin

Question 31

Compare Bacon's empirical method to Descartes' s deductive reasoning.

Question 32

Explain the effect of the camera obscura and the microscope on the detail-obsessed Dutch artists .

Question 33

Why was Rembrandt's Captain Frans Banning Cocq Mustering His Company once mistitled The Night Watch?

A)It was covered with grime
B)Captain Cocq was a Spanish spy
C)Rembrandt never titled it
D)The subject's name was unknown

Question 34

Summarize Descartes' use of deductive reasoning to prove to his satisfaction the existence of God.

Question 35

In Descent from the Cross,discussed in the chapter's "Continuity and Change" section,why does Rembrandt push his scene deeper into the canvas than does Rubens in his earlier painting of the same title?

A)To make his small painting more intimate
B)To remove the viewers from the action
C)To make the subjects look more helpless
D)To accommodate more subjects around the cross

Question 36

What provided one of the main forms of entertainment at Dutch family gatherings?

A)The performance of keyboard music
B)Fantasias played on an organ
C)Virtuoso performances on the violin
D)The singing of secular madrigals

Question 37

List and define three ways in which seventeenth-century Amsterdam can be considered a city of contradictions.

Question 38

Explain the meaning and significance of René Descartes' famous expression,"Cogito,ergo sum " ("I think,therefore I am").

Question 39

List and briefly explain Francis Bacon's four major categories of false notion.

Question 40

What distinguished Bach's cantatas from the simple melodies of the Lutheran chorales on which they were based?

A)Lush string accompaniments
B)A double chorus
C)Addition of counterpoint
D)Narration by a tenor evangelist

Question 41

Using as examples at least two of his works,describe Rembrandt van Rijn's use and meaning of light.

Question 42

Describe the position of the seventeenth-century Dutch woman as evidenced by the paintings of Judith Leyster and Jan Vermeer.

Question 43

Describe the developments in Dutch music during the seventeenth century,highlighting especially the innovations and contributions of Johann Sebastian Bach.