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