<P> Any piece of art is in theory capable of being analysed in terms of style; neither periods nor artists can avoid having a style, except by complete incompetence, and conversely natural objects or sights cannot be said to have a style, as style only results from choices made by a maker . Whether the artist makes a conscious choice of style, or can identify his own style, hardly matters . Artists in recent developed societies tend to be highly conscious of their own style, arguably over-conscious, whereas for earlier artists stylistic choices were probably "largely unselfconscious". </P> <P> Most stylistic periods are identified and defined later by art historians, but artists may choose to define and name their own style . The names of most older styles are the invention of art historians and would not have been understood by the practitioners of those styles . Some originated as terms of derision, including Gothic, Baroque, and Rococo . Cubism on the other hand was a conscious identification made by a few artists; the word itself seems to have originated with critics rather than painters, but was rapidly accepted by the artists . </P> <P> Western art, like that of some other cultures, most notably Chinese art, has a marked tendency to revive at intervals "classic" styles from the past . In critical analysis of the visual arts, the style of a work of art is typically treated as distinct from its iconography, which covers the subject and the content of the work, though for Jas Elsner this distinction is "not, of course, true in any actual example; but it has proved rhetorically extremely useful". </P> <P> Classical art criticism and the relatively few medieval writings on aesthetics did not greatly develop a concept of style in art, or analysis of it, and though Renaissance and Baroque writers on art are greatly concerned with what we would call style, they did not develop a coherent theory of it, at least outside architecture . Giorgio Vasari set out a hugely influential but much - questioned account of the development of style in Italian painting (mainly) from Giotto to his own Mannerist period . He stressed the development of a Florentine style based on disegno or line - based drawing, rather than Venetian colour . With other Renaissance theorists like Leon Battista Alberti he continued classical debates over the best balance in art between the realistic depiction of nature and idealization of it; this debate was to continue until the 19th century and the advent of Modernism . </P>

Identify the characteristics that are applicable to all works of art