Early Europe & Colonial Americas

What this unit covers

The topics below follow the published Art History course framework for Unit 3. This unit is worth 20% of the exam, so budget your time against that rather than against how long the unit takes to teach.

Lessons in this unit

• Late Antiquity, Byzantium & the Gothic15 min · 3 objectivesExplain how early Christian, Byzantine, and Islamic art expressed faith through image, light, and pattern · Describe the structural and symbolic logic of Romanesque and Gothic churches · Analyze the shift from flat, symbolic imagery toward the naturalism of Giotto
• Renaissance, Baroque & the Colonial Americas15 min · 3 objectivesExplain Renaissance innovations: linear perspective, naturalism, and the revival of classical humanism · Describe how Baroque artists used light, movement, and emotion to engage the viewer · Analyze how colonial art in the Americas fused European, Indigenous, and Asian sources

What examiners penalize here

• For Gothic architecture, memorize the trio that makes height and light possible: **pointed arch + ribbed vault + flying buttress**. An FRQ on Chartres wants you to connect these structural features to the *effect* — thin walls, huge stained-glass windows, and an interior read as filled with divine light.

Practice Art History

Our practice bank is drawn from across the whole course rather than filtered to one unit, which is closer to how the exam asks anyway — it will not tell you which unit a question is testing.

Questions about this unit

All 10 units of AP Art History

1. Unit 1 · Global Prehistory
2. Unit 2 · Ancient Mediterranean
3. Unit 3 · Early Europe & Colonial Americas
4. Unit 4 · Later Europe & Americas
5. Unit 5 · Indigenous Americas
6. Unit 6 · Africa
7. Unit 7 · West & Central Asia
8. Unit 8 · South, East & Southeast Asia
9. Unit 9 · The Pacific
10. Unit 10 · Global Contemporary