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 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 plein 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)