Free AP® Art History Practice Test (2026)

Question 1

The great sarsen circle at Stonehenge, the Neolithic monument on Salisbury Plain in England, was built with which structural system?

Accepted Answer

Post-and-lintel

Answer

Corbeled vaulting

Answer

Arches with keystones

Answer

Cantilevered stone slabs

Question 2

Which structural device lets the round dome of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople rest on a square base formed by four great arches?

Accepted Answer

Pendentives

Answer

Flying buttresses

Answer

Ribbed groin vaults

Answer

A hypostyle forest of columns

Question 3

Eugène Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People commemorates which event?

Accepted Answer

The July Revolution of 1830 in Paris

Answer

The storming of the Bastille in 1789

Answer

Napoleon's coronation as emperor in 1804

Answer

The Paris Commune of 1871

Question 4

The Templo Mayor in the Mexica capital Tenochtitlan had twin shrines on its summit. To which two gods were they dedicated?

Accepted Answer

Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc

Answer

Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca

Answer

Coyolxauhqui and Coatlicue

Answer

Viracocha and Inti

Question 5

The Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis is a Doric temple, yet the continuous sculpted frieze of a procession that runs around its inner building is a feature of which order?

Accepted Answer

Ionic

Answer

Corinthian

Answer

Tuscan

Answer

Composite

Question 6

At the Great Stupa at Sanchi in India, how do Buddhist worshipers traditionally honor the relics inside the solid dome?

Accepted Answer

By walking clockwise around the dome on a path enclosed by a stone railing

Answer

By entering a large hall inside the dome to pray before a seated Buddha image

Answer

By climbing a staircase to a temple on the summit to leave offerings there

Answer

By bathing in a pool at the foot of the dome before hearing a sermon

Question 7

Michelangelo's frescoes on the Sistine Chapel ceiling (c. 1508–1512) were commissioned by

Accepted Answer

Pope Julius II

Answer

Pope Sixtus IV

Answer

Lorenzo de' Medici

Answer

Emperor Charles V

Question 8

Édouard Manet's Olympia (1863) shocked Paris partly because it turned a famous Renaissance reclining nude into a modern Parisian courtesan. Which painting did it rework?

Accepted Answer

Titian's Venus of Urbino

Answer

Botticelli's Birth of Venus

Answer

Fragonard's The Swing

Answer

Ingres's Grande Odalisque

Question 9

How are the more than 58,000 names on Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1982) arranged?

Accepted Answer

In order of the date each person died or went missing

Answer

Alphabetically by last name within each branch of service

Answer

Grouped by home state, then by city or town

Answer

By military rank, from generals down to privates

Question 10

The Great Mosque of Djenné in Mali is built of adobe, with wooden beams (toron) jutting from its walls. Why does the community gather each year for a festival on the building?

Accepted Answer

To replaster the mud walls, which the rains wear away

Answer

To repaint the glazed tile mosaics that cover its domes

Answer

To add a new story to the top of its minarets

Answer

To replace stone foundations damaged by floods

Question 11

Which material made it possible to build the Pantheon's huge unreinforced dome, open at the top in an oculus, in 2nd-century CE Rome?

Accepted Answer

Roman concrete, made lighter toward the top of the dome

Answer

Marble blocks laid in courses on a post-and-lintel frame

Answer

An iron framework hidden behind the coffers of the ceiling

Answer

A timber frame covered with a thin skin of fired brick

Question 12

In Diego Velázquez's Las Meninas (1656), who are the two figures reflected in the mirror on the back wall?

Accepted Answer

King Philip IV and Queen Mariana of Spain

Answer

The Infanta Margarita's chaperone and bodyguard

Answer

Velázquez's own parents

Answer

Two cardinals visiting the Spanish court from Rome

Question 13

Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) is often seen as a step toward Cubism. Which sources shaped the mask-like faces of its figures?

Accepted Answer

Iberian sculpture and African masks

Answer

Japanese woodblock prints

Answer

Byzantine mosaics

Answer

Ancient Egyptian tomb paintings and reliefs

Question 14

Kara Walker's Darkytown Rebellion (2001) confronts the history of slavery using

Accepted Answer

black cut-paper silhouettes on a wall with colored light projected over them

Answer

a series of large oil paintings in the style of 19th-century history painting

Answer

a group of bronze statues installed in a public square

Answer

staged photographs of reenactors at former plantation sites

Question 15

The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem (691–692 CE) was built under which Islamic dynasty?

Accepted Answer

Umayyad

Answer

Abbasid

Answer

Ottoman

Answer

Safavid

Question 16

At the top of the basalt stele inscribed with the Code of Hammurabi, the king stands before the seated god Shamash. Why is Shamash shown?

Accepted Answer

As the sun god and god of justice, he grants Hammurabi the right to rule and give laws

Answer

As the god of war, he celebrates the military victories that first made Hammurabi king

Answer

As a deified ancestor of the king, he marks the stele as part of a royal tomb

Answer

As the god of the harvest, he blesses the farmland whose ownership the laws protect

Question 17

Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait (1434) owes its glowing color and fine detail to which medium, which Flemish painters helped make popular?

Accepted Answer

Oil paint on wood panel

Answer

Tempera on wood panel

Answer

Fresco on wet plaster

Answer

Encaustic on wood panel

Question 18

Fallingwater, the house cantilevered over a waterfall in rural Pennsylvania, is the best-known example of whose "organic architecture"?

Accepted Answer

Frank Lloyd Wright

Answer

Le Corbusier

Answer

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Answer

Louis Sullivan

Question 19

Which construction technique is characteristic of Inka masonry at Machu Picchu?

Accepted Answer

Granite blocks cut to fit tightly together without mortar

Answer

Adobe walls replastered by the community each year

Answer

Stone walls faced with carved and brightly painted reliefs

Answer

Large earthen mounds raised in the shape of animals

Question 20

Katsushika Hokusai's Under the Wave off Kanagawa (c. 1830–1833) was made as

Accepted Answer

a color woodblock print, made in many copies for sale

Answer

a single ink painting on a silk hanging scroll for a temple

Answer

a painted folding screen commissioned by the shogun

Answer

a lacquered panel made for an imperial palace

Question 21

The contrapposto stance and ideal proportions of the Augustus of Prima Porta are borrowed from which Greek statue?

Accepted Answer

Polykleitos's Doryphoros (Spear Bearer)

Answer

The Anavysos Kouros, an Archaic grave marker

Answer

The Winged Victory of Samothrace

Answer

The Hellenistic bronze Seated Boxer

Question 22

Casta paintings such as Spaniard and Indian Produce a Mestizo (c. 1715), attributed to Juan Rodríguez Juárez, were made mainly to

Accepted Answer

label and rank the mixed-ancestry groups of colonial New Spain's society

Answer

record the history of Indigenous rulers from the centuries before the Spanish conquest

Answer

serve as devotional images of saints for the altars of colonial churches

Answer

illustrate the tribute that conquered towns owed to the Spanish king

Question 23

Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (1997) is known for

Accepted Answer

curving titanium-clad forms designed with aerospace software

Answer

white marble porticoes and a dome modeled on classical temples

Answer

glass curtain walls hung on a strict rectangular grid of steel

Answer

rough, exposed concrete surfaces in the Brutalist manner

Question 24

Thomas Cole's The Oxbow (1836), with stormy wilderness on one side and cleared farmland on the other, is a founding work of which American movement?

Accepted Answer

Hudson River School

Answer

Ashcan School

Answer

Regionalism

Answer

Abstract Expressionism

Question 25

Marshall Islands navigation charts, made of wood and fiber, were used mainly to

Accepted Answer

teach and memorize how ocean swells move around islands before a voyage

Answer

record the ancestry of a chief's family for recitation at ceremonies

Answer

mark which families held rights to fishing grounds inside a lagoon

Answer

measure the angle of guide stars above the horizon to find a canoe's latitude at sea

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