Lesson T4.1.1

T4.1.1 Periods and styles from ancient times Quiz: KS3 Art & Design, Unit 4

20 questions

Written by Revision Ninja · Last reviewed 11 October 2026

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Lesson T4.1.1, Periods and styles from ancient times: 20 multiple choice questions for the KS3 Art & Design (National Curriculum), Unit 4: History of art, craft, design and architecture, written with Revision Ninja.

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The 20 questions

  1. Which ancient civilisation is famous for pyramids and decorated tombs?

    • Ancient Egypt, which built pyramids and decorated tombs with paintings and carvings
    • Medieval England, which built castles and stone churches in the countryside
    • Ancient Rome, which built aqueducts and amphitheatres across its wide empire
    • Ancient Greece, which built temples and developed democracy in its city-states

  2. In Ancient Egyptian art, how were figures often shown?

    • Blurred and soft, as if the figures were moving quickly through a crowded street
    • Upside down, so that the viewer had to turn the picture round to see the figures
    • Fully three-dimensional, with realistic shadows falling across the face and body
    • With the head in profile, the eye facing front and the body partly turned

  3. What writing system did Ancient Egypt use in its art and inscriptions?

    • Kanji, which were brush-written characters used in Japanese painting and print
    • Runes, which were carved into wood and stone in northern European societies
    • Hieroglyphs, which combined picture signs and sound signs in inscriptions
    • Cuneiform, which was pressed into wet clay tablets using a reed stylus

  4. Which Ancient Greek art form used black and red figures painted on pottery?

    • Mosaic, which used small pieces of coloured stone set into a floor or wall
    • Vase painting, which used black-figure and red-figure techniques on clay pottery
    • Stained glass, which used coloured glass pieces held together by lead strips
    • Fresco, which used pigment painted onto wet plaster on the walls of buildings

  5. What did Ancient Greek sculptors aim to show in the human body?

    • Animals with human heads, repeated in a pattern across every surface of the stone
    • Ideal proportion and balance, often in a relaxed pose called contrapposto
    • Figures that were always made to look flat and two-dimensional on the surface
    • Only the bones and skeleton of the body, with no muscle or skin shown at all

  6. Which famous Greek temple was built on the Athenian Acropolis in the fifth century BCE?

    • The Pantheon, which was built as a domed temple in the city of Rome
    • The Hagia Sophia, which was built as a domed church in the city of Istanbul
    • The Parthenon, which was built on the Acropolis in Athens in the fifth century BCE
    • The Colosseum, which was built as an amphitheatre in the city of Rome

  7. What is a mosaic?

    • A drawing made with charcoal that is blended with the fingers into soft tones
    • A painting made with one broad brush stroke on a blank wall in a single session
    • A picture or pattern made from small pieces of coloured stone, glass or tile
    • A sculpture carved from one large block of marble without any joins or seams

  8. Which Roman art form is preserved at Pompeii?

    • Cave paintings, which were made with charcoal and natural ochre in the rock
    • Wall paintings, called frescoes, which were painted onto wet plaster on the walls
    • Stained glass windows, which were set into stone arches in Roman churches
    • Egyptian hieroglyphs, which were carved onto tall obelisks in the city squares

  9. Which feature is characteristic of Byzantine art?

    • Impressionist brushwork that captures the effect of changing light on the water
    • Gold backgrounds and religious mosaics with formal, flat, dignified figures
    • Cubist fragments that show objects from several viewpoints at the same time
    • Pop art images based on comic strips and the style of advertising posters

  10. Which building is a famous example of Byzantine architecture in Istanbul?

    • Hagia Sophia, a domed church built in the sixth century in Istanbul
    • The Taj Mahal, a white marble tomb with a large dome in the city of Agra
    • The Parthenon, a temple built on the Acropolis in Athens in the fifth century BCE
    • Notre-Dame de Paris, a Gothic cathedral with flying buttresses and tall windows

  11. What did Romanesque architecture typically use to create arches and vaults?

    • Timber beams with paper screens that could be slid across to change the room
    • Steel frames with glass walls that let in light from every side of the building
    • Pointed arches with flying buttresses that carried the weight outside the walls
    • Round arches and thick walls that supported heavy stone vaults above

  12. What is a characteristic of Gothic cathedrals?

    • Wooden frames with straw walls and a thatched roof over the main hall
    • Concrete domes with no windows at the top of the building in the centre
    • Pointed arches, tall windows and flying buttresses that support the walls
    • Round arches with thick walls and very small windows set high up the walls

  13. What is linear perspective, developed in the Renaissance?

    • A way of painting flat colours on a surface with no shadows or depth at all
    • A method of printing the same image repeated across a wall in a regular pattern
    • A method of showing depth with converging lines that meet at a vanishing point
    • A technique of carving stone so that it looks like a wooden object in the room

  14. Which Renaissance artist painted the Mona Lisa?

    • Leonardo da Vinci, who painted the Mona Lisa in the early sixteenth century
    • Vincent van Gogh, who painted Starry Night in the late nineteenth century
    • Claude Monet, who painted water lilies and landscapes in the late nineteenth century
    • Pablo Picasso, who co-founded Cubism in Paris in the early twentieth century

  15. Which Renaissance artist painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?

    • Andy Warhol, who made screen prints of consumer products in the 1960s in New York
    • Michelangelo, who painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling in Rome in the early 1500s
    • Salvador Dali, who painted dream-like Surrealist scenes in the early twentieth century
    • Claude Monet, who painted water lilies and landscapes in the late nineteenth century

  16. What is the approximate date range of the Renaissance in Europe?

    • Roughly the eighth to the tenth century CE, during the early medieval period
    • Roughly the first to the fifth century CE, during the decline of Ancient Rome
    • Roughly the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, beginning in Italy
    • Roughly the nineteenth to the twentieth century, during the rise of industry

  17. What is a key feature of Islamic geometric art?

    • Large fresco paintings of religious stories on wet plaster walls in churches
    • Realistic portraits of rulers painted in soft oil on a stretched canvas frame
    • Figurative scenes showing daily life in great detail on tall stone pillars
    • Repeating patterns made from circles, stars and interlocking polygon shapes

  18. Which ancient Chinese funerary art is famous for life-sized clay soldiers?

    • The Terracotta Army, made for the tomb of the first Emperor of Qin
    • The Ghent Altarpiece, a large painted panel altarpiece in a church in Belgium
    • The Bayeux Tapestry, a long embroidered cloth showing the Norman conquest
    • The Book of Kells, a richly decorated illuminated manuscript of the Gospels

  19. What was the main material used for writing and records in Ancient Mesopotamia?

    • Papyrus scrolls, which were written with hieroglyphs in black and red ink
    • Parchment pages, which were written with Gothic script by monks in abbeys
    • Bamboo slips, which were written with ink brushes in the style of calligraphy
    • Clay tablets, which were inscribed with cuneiform script and then dried

  20. Which Ancient Greek architectural order has columns with a simple, plain capital?

    • The Gothic order, with pointed arches and tall columns set in a stone cathedral
    • The Corinthian order, with tall columns and capitals decorated with acanthus leaves
    • The Ionic order, with slender columns and capitals decorated with curling scrolls
    • The Doric order, with sturdy columns and plain capitals, as on the Parthenon

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