Research your selected painting (who is the artist? Why did he or she paint it? How does it represent a culture or time period?), write a short descriptive criticism and then a short interpretive/evaluative criticism where you assert that the painting should or should not be considered a masterpiece

While you are not limited to the following paintings, the selections hyperlinked below are works that are well known and most are considered masterpieces. These selections cover a range of cultures and time periods, but if there is a culture or period you don’t see represented, feel free to explore the painting that most interests you (other sources are provided in this week’s Supplemental Resources that may help you decide upon a painting (pick on below). Research your selected painting (who is the artist? Why did he or she paint it? How does it represent a culture or time period?), write a short descriptive criticism and then a short interpretive/evaluative criticism where you assert that the painting should or should not be considered a masterpiece. Use and highlight one or more vocabulary terms in both your descriptive and interpretive/evaluative criticism. Be sure to employ Jacobus and Martin’s four perceptual criteria for identifying art (see page 20) when deciding if the painting is a masterpiece. Cite a minimum of one reliable source in a properly formatted bibliographic.

• Hall of the Bulls
• Christ Pantocrator, ca. 500-530.
• The Story of Bayad and Riyad
• Zhou Jichang’s Lohans Bestowing Alms on Suffering Beings
• La commedia illumina Firenze (The Comedy Illuminating Florence)
• Leonardo da Vinci’s Madonna of the Rocks
• Botticelli’s Primavera
• Basawan and Chatar Muni’s Akbar and the Elephant Hawai
• Ethiopian Illuminated Manuscript John the Evangelist page
• Albrecht Dürer’s Adam and Eve and Knight, Death, and the Devil
• Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Triumph of Death
• Peter Paul Rubens’s The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus
• Rembrandt’s Susanna and the Elders
• Velázquez’s Las Meninas
• Abd Al-Hamid Lahawri’s The Padshahnama
• Vermeer’s The Art of Painting
• Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s The Swing
• Shitao’s Riverbank of Peach Blossom