Understanding of main historical concepts

You were supposed to demonstrate your understanding of main historical concepts and their direct influence on the evolution of visual art. In fact, my general feedback across the board is that most of you separated discussiong of the art and the history. Remember this is Art History, where the two concepts are intertwined. For example, many of you would mention an enormaously important topic only inpassing - humanism for example (or the Reformation, or perspective, patronage, etc…) and state it as accepted fact: e.g. "Humanism arose during the Renaissance and could be seen in art through the period." Any textbook or online source might tell me that. But think about how little information that sentence contains. Instead, in an essay exam, you should be looking to demonstrate that you understand fully what humanism is and deeply it influenced art formt he period. Many of you used a quote form the book, tying humanism to philosophy and education. That's fine, but you still haven't demonstrated that you understand it. That's where your art work comes in: how does humanism, Greek Philosophy, and education tie into the choice of subject (why and what came before), the employment of new techniques like perspective (why now, how did they come about?), individual artistic innovation, the importance of private patronage, etc.