1. The Study of Art History
The central aim of art history is to determine the original context of artworks.
The study of history is vital to the study of Art.

2. Questions Art Historians Ask:
How old is it?
Chronology- the dating of art objects and buildings
Physical evidence- reliably indicated an objects age
Documentary evidence- helps pinpoint dates
Visual evidence- hair, furniture, clothing styles
Stylistic evidence-analysis of style: an artists distinctive manner of producing an object (the most unreliable method of dating an artwork)

3. What is its style?
Period style-characteristic artistic manner of a specific time or culture “Archaic Greek”
Regional Style-variations in style tied to geography
Provenance-place of origin/former owner(s)
Personal style-distinctive manner of artists

4. What is its subject? Narrative- the story.
Types of artworks-Religious, historical, mythological, genre (daily life) portraiture, landscape, still life.
Iconography “the writing of images” refers to the content or subject of an artwork, and the study of symbols, images that stand for other images or ideas.
Attributes- identifying elements
Personification- abstract ideas embodied in human form

5. Who made it?
Can attribute or assign a work to someone based on knowledge of personal style: “the Andokides Painter”
Connoisseur-an expert in assigning artworks to “the hand” of one artist rather than another
School- not an educational institution- denotes the chronological, stylistic and geographic similarities (“Dutch School of the 17th c.)

6. Who Paid for it?
Patrons- who paid for individual works that were possibly influenced why it looks the way it does.
All modes of artistic production reveal the impact of patronage (religious works/Middle Ages)

7. The Words Art Historians Use
Formal analysis: the visual analysis of artistic form