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/ Characteristics Chief Artists and Major Historical

Movements Works Events

Stone Age (30,000 b.c.–2500 Cave painting, fertility Lascaux Cave Painting, Ice Age ends
b.c.) goddesses, megalithic Woman of Willendorf, (10,000 b.c.–
structures Stonehenge 8,000 b.c.); New
Stone Age and
first permanent
settlements (8000
b.c.–2500 b.c.)

Mesopotamian (3500 b.c.– Warrior art and narration in Standard of Ur, Gate of Sumerians invent
539 b.c.) stone relief Ishtar, Stele of writing (3400
Hammurabi’s Code 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: Imhotep, Step Pyramid, Narmer unites
pyramids and tomb painting Great Pyramids, Bust of Upper/Lower
Nefertiti Egypt (3100
b.c.); Rameses II
battles
the Hittites (1274
b.c.); Cleopatra
dies (30 b.c.)

Greek and Hellenistic (850 Greek idealism: balance, Parthenon, Myron, Phidias, Athens defeats
b.c.–31 b.c.) perfect proportions; Polykleitos, Praxiteles Persia at
architectural Marathon (490
orders(Doric, Ionic, b.c.);
Corinthian) 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 Augustus of Primaporta, Julius Caesar
and down to earth; the arch Colosseum, Trajan’s assassinated (44
Column, b.c.); Augustus
Pantheon proclaimed
Emperor (27
b.c.); Diocletian
splits Empire
(a.d. 292); Rome
 falls
(a.d. 476)

Indian, Chinese, and Serene, meditative art, and Gu Kaizhi, Li Cheng, Guo Birth of Buddha
Japanese(653 b.c.–a.d. 1900) Arts of the Floating World Xi, Hokusai, Hiroshige (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. Heavenly Byzantine Hagia Sophia, Andrei Justinian partly
476–a.d.1453) mosaics; Islamic Rublev, Mosque of restores Western
architecture and amazing Córdoba, the Roman Empire
maze-like design Alhambra (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 St. Sernin, Durham Viking Raids
 Renaissance, Romanesque, Cathedral, Notre Dame, (793–1066);
Gothic Chartres, Cimabue, Battle of
Duccio, Giotto Hastings (1066);
Crusades I–IV
(1095–1204);
Black Death
(1347–1351);
Hundred Years’
War (1337–
1453)

Early and High Renaissance Rebirth of classical culture Ghiberti’s Doors, Gutenberg
(1400–1550) Brunelleschi, Donatello, invents movable
Botticelli, type (1447);
Leonardo, Michelangelo, Turks conquer
Raphael Constantinople
(1453);
Columbus lands
in New World
(1492); Martin
Luther starts
Reformation
(1517)

Venetian and Northern The Renaissance spreads Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Council of Trent
Renaissance (1430–1550) north- ward to France, the Dürer, Bruegel, Bosch, Jan and Counter-
Low van Reformation
Countries, Poland, Eyck, Rogier van der (1545–1563);
Germany, and England Weyden Copernicus
proves the Earth
 revolves around
the Sun (1543

Mannerism (1527–1580) Art that breaks the rules; Tintoretto, El Greco, Magellan
artifice over nature Pontormo, Bronzino, circumnavigates
Cellini the globe (1520–
1522)

Baroque (1600–1750) Splendor and flourish for Reubens, Rembrandt, Thirty Years’
God; art as a weapon in the Caravaggio, Palace of War between
religious Versailles Catholics and
wars Protestants
(1618–1648)

Neoclassical (1750–1850) Art that recaptures Greco- David, Ingres, Greuze, Enlightenment
Roman grace and grandeur Canova (18th century);
Industrial
Revolution
(1760–1850)

Romanticism (1780–1850) The triumph of imagination Caspar Friedrich, American

and individuality Gericault, Delacroix, Revolution
Turner, Benjamin (1775–1783);
West French
Revolution
(1789–1799);
Napoleon
crowned emperor
 of France (1803)

Realism (1848–1900) Celebrating working class Corot, Courbet, Daumier, European

and peasants; en plein air Millet democratic
rustic painting revolutions of
1848

Impressionism (1865–1885) Capturing fleeting effects of Monet, Manet, Renoir, Franco-Prussian

natural light Pissarro, Cassatt, Morisot, War (1870–
Degas 1871);
Unification of
Germany
(1871)

Post-Impressionism (1885– A soft revolt against Van Gogh, Gauguin, Belle Époque
1910) Impressionism Cézanne, Seurat (late-19th-
century Golden
Age); Japan
defeats Russia
(1905)

Fauvism and Expressionism Harsh colors and flat Matisse, Kirchner, Boxer Rebellion
(1900–1935) surfaces (Fauvism); emotion Kandinsky, Marc in China (1900);
distorting World War
form (1914–1918)

Cubism, Futurism, Pre– and Post–World War 1 Picasso, Braque, Leger, Russian
Supremativism, art experiments: new Boccioni, Severini, Revolution
Constructivism, De Stijl forms to express modern life Malevich (1917);
(1905–1920) American
women
franchised
(1920)

Dada and Surrealism (1917– Ridiculous art; painting Duchamp, Dalí, Ernst, Disillusionment
1950) dreams and exploring the Magritte, de Chirico, after World War
unconscious Kahlo I; The
Great Depression
(1929–1938);
World War II
(1939–1945) and
Nazi horrors;
atomic bombs
dropped on Japan
(1945)

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

Link:

https://www.dummies.com/education/art-appreciation/art-history-timeline/