Eight Days A Week: Class Profile: Spanish Art History

My first class of the week is Art History, Mondays and Wednesdays at 10am in a building within the Centro de Lenguas Mordernas that is about a 20 minute walk from my residencia. (also known as the K building). The professor is this tiny woman named María Estévez with short black hair and a tendency for really awesome and cute styles that no one else could hope to pull off. I have her for one other class as well; some students in the CLM have her for all their classes! The professors here maintain a bit of a distance between themselves and their students, but I can tell it's hard for professors in the CLM because American students dominate it and we are much more open to talk about their personal lives and ours, especially when the basis of some classes IS practicing speaking.

Art History is one of my favorite classes, despite its ability to cramp my hand and my brain with information. María Estévez started with ancient art in Spain and moved through Classical, Islamic, Pre-Romanesque, Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance art within this first half of the semester. These are the main periods we need to know for the mid-term tomorrow, both general information about each period/style and the particularly Spanish aspects during each. Like any art history class, it is a lot of memorizing pictures and analyzing the piece or building to determine which style it fits into, learning terms for various elements of architecture or method of painting, and remembering important artists.

The best part about taking an art history class in Europe is that I've seen a lot of what we talk about! The Sevilla and Toledo Cathedrals; the art at el Prado Museo in Madrid; la Alhambra.... it's really great to fit them all into perspective and reality. This class is great for me because it's interesting and also it will work wonders (I hope!) on my design skills. Even regular old city buildings or small houses are very different here, and it's amazing to see people living in them and working in them in their everyday lives.

Wish me luck on the Art History exam tomorrow!

Could YOU tell me which style/period these are each from?