"Pastoral," derived from the same root as "pasture," typically indicates something having to do with shepherds or other kinds of livestock keepers. In art, a "pastoral" piece depicts figures in rural life in some form, even if not necessarily a scene of herding. After the Industrial Revolution, such paintings were made to evoke a country life that was seen as gone.

A study is done before a work is finished, and does not refer to how elements are put together in a work. Matte refers to a non-glassy surface or finish. A collage may incorporate different style or mediums (the material the artist works with), but does not refer to how these are arranged. Composition describes how the elements come together to create the work.

This painting, Edgar Degas' "The Dance Lesson," was painted in 1879 and is a classic representation of impressionism. With its visible and broad brush strokes and its detached point of view, this painting features the hallmarks of impressionism, a painting style developed in France in the late nineteenth century. Degas preferred to call his artistic style "realism," because he believed his method of painting captured the realistic emotion of a scene, if not an exact representation of it.

A triptych, from Greek words meaning "three fold," was often placed at the altar of medieval and early modern European churches. The paintings allowed for three separate scenes to be shown in one place, which allowed both the artist to depict three related topics and show the viewer a larger scene than one panel would allow. Triptychs were largely used for religious topics in the middle ages, but have remained a popular style up to the present day.

Among the most important and widely painted images in Medieval art were depictions of the Madonna and Child. These paintings, depicting the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus, were meant to show the two holiest figures in Medieval Catholicism to the illiterate believers of the church in the middle ages.

Using newly found mathematical principles in their artwork, Renaissance artists were able to create perspective in Western painting for the first time. Vanishing-point perspective, which creates lines of sight that reflect the depth seen in reality, allowed for portraiture, religious subjects, and other works to be seen in new ways. Coupled with new scientific knowledge and an increasing use of dark colors and shadows, Renaissance art created new perceptions of artwork.

Perspective, the ability to place objects and figures in a 2D image that reflects 3D realities, was one of the driving forces of the artistic era known as the Renaissance. The era included painters like Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, and Michelangelo, who developed modes of portraiture that revolutionized artistic depictions. With this innovation, most Western art can be divided between pre- and post-Renaissance styles.

Contrapposto has to do with the weight shift in a figure, crosshatching is used to create angles, and shading does not imply a contrast. Sfumato is about the transition from light to dark, not contrasting the two. Chiaroscuro is the only answer that works here because its definition is the treatment of light and shadow to show a contrast.