Art History Timeline
The history of art is immense, the earliest cave paintings pre-date writing by almost 27,000 years! If you’re interested in art history, the first thing you should do is take a look at this table which briefly outlines the artists, traits, works, and events that make up major art periods and how art evolved to present day:
| Art Periods/ Movements |
Characteristics | Chief Artists and Major Works | Historical Events |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stone Age (30,000 b.c.–2500 b.c.) | Cave painting, fertility goddesses, megalithic structures | Lascaux Cave Painting, Woman of Willendorf, Stonehenge | Ice Age ends (10,000 b.c.–8,000 b.c.); New Stone Age and first permanent settlements (8000 b.c.–2500 b.c.) |
| Mesopotamian (3500 b.c.–539 b.c.) | Warrior art and narration in stone relief | Standard of Ur, Gate of Ishtar, Stele of Hammurabi’s Code | Sumerians invent writing (3400 b.c.); Hammurabi writes his law code (1780 b.c.); Abraham founds monotheism |
| Egyptian (3100 b.c.–30 b.c.) | Art with an afterlife focus: pyramids and tomb painting | Imhotep, Step Pyramid, Great Pyramids, Bust of Nefertiti | Narmer unites Upper/Lower Egypt (3100 b.c.); Rameses II battles the Hittites (1274 b.c.); Cleopatra dies (30 b.c.) |
| Greek and Hellenistic (850 b.c.–31 b.c.) | Greek idealism: balance, perfect proportions; architectural orders(Doric, Ionic, Corinthian) | Parthenon, Myron, Phidias, Polykleitos, Praxiteles | Athens defeats Persia at Marathon (490 b.c.); Peloponnesian Wars (431 b.c.–404 b.c.); Alexander the Great’s conquests (336 b.c.–323 b.c.) |
| Roman (500 b.c.– a.d. 476) | Roman realism: practical and down to earth; the arch | Augustus of Primaporta, Colosseum, Trajan’s Column, Pantheon | Julius Caesar assassinated (44 b.c.); Augustus proclaimed Emperor (27 b.c.); Diocletian splits Empire (a.d. 292); Rome falls (a.d. 476) |
| Indian, Chinese, and Japanese(653 b.c.–a.d. 1900) | Serene, meditative art, and Arts of the Floating World | Gu Kaizhi, Li Cheng, Guo Xi, Hokusai, Hiroshige | Birth of Buddha (563 b.c.); Silk Road opens (1st century b.c.); Buddhism spreads to China (1st–2nd centuries a.d.) and Japan (5th century a.d.) |
| Byzantine and Islamic (a.d. 476–a.d.1453) | Heavenly Byzantine mosaics; Islamic architecture and amazing maze-like design | Hagia Sophia, Andrei Rublev, Mosque of Córdoba, the Alhambra | Justinian partly restores Western Roman Empire (a.d. 533–a.d. 562); Iconoclasm Controversy (a.d. 726–a.d. 843); Birth of Islam (a.d. 610) and Muslim Conquests (a.d. 632–a.d. 732) |
| Middle Ages (500–1400) | Celtic art, Carolingian Renaissance, Romanesque, Gothic | St. Sernin, Durham Cathedral, Notre Dame, Chartres, Cimabue, Duccio, Giotto | Viking Raids (793–1066); Battle of Hastings (1066); Crusades I–IV (1095–1204); Black Death (1347–1351); Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453) |
| Early and High Renaissance (1400–1550) | Rebirth of classical culture | Ghiberti’s Doors, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Botticelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael | Gutenberg invents movable type (1447); Turks conquer Constantinople (1453); Columbus lands in New World (1492); Martin Luther starts Reformation (1517) |
| Venetian and Northern Renaissance (1430–1550) | The Renaissance spreads north- ward to France, the Low Countries, Poland, Germany, and England | Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Dürer, Bruegel, Bosch, Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden | Council of Trent and Counter-Reformation (1545–1563); Copernicus proves the Earth revolves around the Sun (1543 |
| Mannerism (1527–1580) | Art that breaks the rules; artifice over nature | Tintoretto, El Greco, Pontormo, Bronzino, Cellini | Magellan circumnavigates the globe (1520–1522) |
| Baroque (1600–1750) | Splendor and flourish for God; art as a weapon in the religious wars | Reubens, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Palace of Versailles | Thirty Years’ War between Catholics and Protestants (1618–1648) |
| Neoclassical (1750–1850) | Art that recaptures Greco-Roman grace and grandeur | David, Ingres, Greuze, Canova | Enlightenment (18th century); Industrial Revolution (1760–1850) |
| Romanticism (1780–1850) | The triumph of imagination and individuality | Caspar Friedrich, Gericault, Delacroix, Turner, Benjamin West | American Revolution (1775–1783); French Revolution (1789–1799); Napoleon crowned emperor of France (1803) |
| Realism (1848–1900) | Celebrating working class and peasants;en plain air rustic painting | Corot, Courbet, Daumier, Millet | European democratic revolutions of 1848 |
| Impressionism (1865–1885) | Capturing fleeting effects of natural light | Monet, Manet, Renoir, Pissarro, Cassatt, Morisot, Degas | Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871); Unification of Germany (1871) |
| Post-Impressionism (1885–1910) | A soft revolt against Impressionism | Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne, Seurat | Belle Époque (late-19th-century Golden Age); Japan defeats Russia (1905) |
| Fauvism and Expressionism (1900–1935) | Harsh colors and flat surfaces (Fauvism); emotion distorting form | Matisse, Kirchner, Kandinsky, Marc | Boxer Rebellion in China (1900); World War (1914–1918) |
| Cubism, Futurism, Supremativism, Constructivism, De Stijl (1905–1920) | Pre– and Post–World War 1 art experiments: new forms to express modern life | Picasso, Braque, Leger, Boccioni, Severini, Malevich | Russian Revolution (1917); American women franchised (1920) |
| Dada and Surrealism(1917–1950) | Ridiculous art; painting dreams and exploring the unconscious | Duchamp, Dalí, Ernst, Magritte, de Chirico, Kahlo | Disillusionment after World War I; The Great Depression (1929–1938); World War II (1939–1945) and Nazi horrors; atomic bombs dropped on Japan (1945) |
| Abstract Expressionism (1940s–1950s) and Pop Art (1960s) | Post–World War II: pure abstraction and expression without form; popular art absorbs consumerism | Gorky, Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko, Warhol, Lichtenstein | Cold War and Vietnam War (U.S. enters 1965); U.S.S.R. suppresses Hungarian revolt (1956) Czechoslovakian revolt (1968) |
| Postmodernism and Deconstructivism (1970– ) | Art without a center and reworking and mixing past styles | Gerhard Richter, Cindy Sherman, Anselm Kiefer, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid | Nuclear freeze movement; Cold War fizzles; Communism collapses in Eastern Europe and U.S.S.R. (1989–1991) |