LESSON 9:

The History of
ART
 ART HISTORY TIMELINE
by Jesse Bryant Wilder

✣ The history of art is immense, the earliest cave paintings

pre-date writing by almost 27,000 years! if one is
interested in the Art history, the first thing he/she 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.a

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 ART PERIODS/ CHARACTERISTICS CHIEF ARTISTS AND HISTORICAL EVENTS
MOVEMENTS MAJOR WORKS

Stone Age (30,000 Cave painting, fertility
B.C.- 2500 B.C.) 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 Warrior art and narration Standard of Ur, Gate of Sumerians invent
(3500 B.C.- 539 art and narration in stone Ishtar, Stele of Hammurabi’s writing (3400 B.C.);
B.C.) relief Code Hammurabi writes his
law code (1780 B.C.);
Abraham founds
monotheism
Egyptian (3100 Art with an afterlife focus: Imhotep, Step Pyramid, Narmer unites
B.C.-3O B.C.) pyramids and tomb Great Pyramids, Bust of Upper/Lower Egypt
painting Nefertiti (3100 B.C.); Rameses
II battles the Hittites
(1274 B.C.); Cleopatra
dies (30 B.C.)

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 ART PERIODS/ CHARACTERISTICS CHIEF ARTISTS AND HISTORICAL EVENTS
MOVEMENTS MAJOR WORKS
Greek and Greek idealism: perfect Parthenon, Myron, Phidias, Athens defeats Persia
Hellenistic (850 proportions; architectural Polykleitos, Praxiteles at Marathon (490 B.C.);
B.C.-31 B.C.) orders (Doric, Ionic Peloponnesian Wars
Corinthian) (431 B.C.-404 B.C.);
Alexander the Great’s
conquests (336 B.C.-
323 B.C.)
Roman (500 B.C.- Roman realism: practical Augustus of Primaporta, Julius Caesar
A.D. 476) and down to earth; the arch Colosseum, Trajan’s column, assassinated (44 B.C.);
Pantheon Augustus proclaimed
emperor (27 B.C.);
Diocletian splits Empire
(A.D. 292); Rome falls
Indian, Chinese , Serene, meditative art, and Gu Kaizhi, Li Cheng, Guo Xi, Birth of Buddha (563
and Japanese (653 Arts of the Floating World Hokusai, Hiroshige B.C.); Silk Road opens
B.C.-A.D. 19000) (1st Century B.C.);
Buddhism spreads to
China (1st-2nd centuries
A.D.) and Japan (5th
century A.D.)
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ART PERIODS/ CHARACTERISTICS CHIEF ARTISTS HISTORICAL EVENTS
MOVEMENTS AND MAJOR
WORKS
Byzantine and Heavenly Byzantine Hagia Sophia, Andrei Justinian partly restores Western
Islamic (A.D. mosaics; Islamic Rublev, Mosque of Roman Empire (A.D. 533-A.D.562);
476-A.D. 1453) architecture and Cordoba, the Iconoclasm Controversy (A.D. 726-
amazing maze-like Alhambra A.D. 843); Birth of Islam (A.D. 610) and
design Muslim Conquests (A.D. 632 A.D. 732)
Middle Ages Celtic art, Carolingian St. Sernin, Durham Viking Raids (793-1066); Battle of
(500-1400) Renaissance, Cathedral, Notre Hastings (1066); Crusades I-IV (1095-
Romanesque, Gothic Dame, Chartres 1204); Black Death (1347-1351);
Cimabue, Duccio, Hundred Year’s War (1337-1453)
Giotto
Early and High Rebirth of classical Ghilberti’s Doors, Gutenberg invents movable type
Renaissance culture Brunelleschi, (1447); Turks conquer Constantinople
Donatello, Botticelli, (1453); Columbus lands in New World
Leonardo, (1492); Martin Luther starts reformation
Michelangelo, (1517)
Raphael

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 ART PERIODS/ CHARACTERISTICS CHIEF ARTISTS AND HISTORICAL EVENTS
MOVEMENTS MAJOR WORKS
Venetian and The Renaissance spreads Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Council of Trent and
Northern north-ward to France, the Durer, Bruegel, Bosch, Jan Counter-Reformation
Renaissance Low Countries, Poland, van Eyck, Rogier van der (1565-1563);
(1430-1550) Germany, and England Weyden Copernicus proves the
Earth revolves around
the Sun
Mannerism (1527- Art that breaks the rules; Tintoretto, El Greco, Magellan
1580) artifice over nature Pontormo, Bronzino, Cellini circumnavigates the
globe (1530-1522)
Baroque (1600- Splendor and flourish for Reubens, Rembrant, Thirty Year’s War
1750) God; art as a weapon in the Caravaggio, Palace of between, Catholics and
religious wars Versailles Protestants (1618-
1648)
Neoclassical (1750- Art that recaptures Greco- David, Ingres, Greuze, Enlightenment (18th
1850) Roman grace and grandeur Canova century) Industrial
Revolution (1760-1850)

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 ART PERIODS/ CHARACTERISTICS CHIEF ARTISTS AND HISTORICAL EVENTS
MOVEMENTS MAJOR WORKS
Romanticism The triumph of imagination Caspar Friedrich, Gericault, American Revolution
and individuality Delacroix, Turner, Benjamin (1775-1783); French
West Revolution (1789-
1799); Napoleon
crowned emperor of
France (1803)
Realism (1848- Celebrating working class Corot, Courbet, Daumier, European democratic
1900) and peasants; en plein air Miller revolutions of 1848
rustic painting
Impressionism Capturing fleeting effects Monet, Manet, Renoir, Franco-Prussian War
(1865-1885) of natural light Pissaro, Cassatt, Morisot, (1870-1871);
Degas Unification of Germany
(1871)

Post- A soft revolt against Van Gogh, Gauguin, Belle Epoque (late-19th-
Impressionism Impressionism Cezanne, Seurat century Golden Age);
(1885-1935) Japan defeats Russia
(1905)

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 ART PERIODS/ CHARACTERISTICS CHIEF ARTISTS AND HISTORICAL EVENTS
MOVEMENTS MAJOR WORKS
Fauvism and Harsh colors and flat Matisse, Kirchner, Boxer Rebellion in
Expressionism surfaces (Fauvism); Kandinsky, Marc Chagall China (1900); World
(1900) emotion distorting form War (1914-1918)
Cubism, Futurism, Pre-and Post- World War 1 Picasso, Braque, Leger, Russian Revolution
Supremativism, art experiments: new forms Boccioni. Severini, Malevich (1917); American
Constructivism, De to express modern life women franchised
Stijl (1905-1920) (1920)
Dada and Ridiculous art; painting Duchamp, Dali, Ernst, Disillusionment after
Surrealism (1917- dreams and exploring the Magritte, de Chirico, Kahlo World War I, The great
1950) unconscious Depression (1929-
1938); World War II
(1939-1945) and Nazi
horrors; atomic bombs
dropped on Japan
(1945)

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 ART PERIODS/ CHARACTERISTICS CHIEF ARTISTS AND HISTORICAL EVENTS
MOVEMENTS MAJOR WORKS
Abstract Post-World War II: pure Gorky, Pollock, de Kooning, Cold War and Vietnam
Expressionism abstraction and expression Rothko, Warhol, War (U.S. enters 1965);
(1940-1950s) and without form; popular art Lichtenstein U.S.S.R. suppresses
Pop Art (1960’s) absorbs consumerism Hungarian revolt (1956)
Czechoslovakian revolt
(1968)
Postmodernism Art without a center and Gerhard Richter, Cindy Nuclear freeze
and reworking and mixing past Sherman, Anselm Kiefer, movement; Cold War
Deconstructivism styles Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid fizzles; Communism
(1970-) collapses in
EasternEurope and
U.S.S.R. (1989-1991)

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Thank you! ☺