Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne provided higher-level Junior Cert students with a colourful start to their exam, yesterday, when candidates were asked a number of questions on Renaissance art. The illustrations drew praise from teachers and students alike. "The pictures were beautifully coloured and of amazing quality," commented Ms Anne O'Connor head of history at Alexandra College, Dublin. The same was true of the ordinary-level paper, where pictures included an artist's impression of farming life in ancient Ireland and a medieval town and monastery, she said.

However, higher-level students were disappointed in question 6, which failed to include anticipated questions on the Cold War, African Nationalism or European unity, Ms O'Connor noted. Students also found the extract from a speech on Irish neutrality by Sir Winston Churchill difficult to understand. Mr Dermot Lucey, TUI subject representative and a teacher at Ballincollig Community School, Co Cork, thought that the average student would find the higher-level paper difficult.

"Too many marks were given to parts of questions where students would find it difficult to know enough to gain those marks," he explained. Nonetheless, "students could be quite lucky because four out of the six questions were on 20th century Irish political history, a third of the marks", he said. "If you knew that very well you could do quite well." The ordinary-level Junior Cert history paper was fair, Ms O'Connor believed. However, the extract from a letter by James Connolly, written from the GPO in 1916, was "searching and quite stretching" for students at this level.