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