Art Periods/ Characteristics Chief Artists and Historical Events

Movements Major Works

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

Mesopotamian (3500 Warrior art and Standard of Ur, Gate Sumerians invent writing
b.c.–539 b.c.) narration in stone relief of Ishtar, Stele of (3400 b.c.); Hammurabi
Hammurabi’s Code writes his law
code (1780 b.c.);
Abraham founds
monotheism

Egyptian (3100 b.c.–30 Art with an afterlife Imhotep, Step Narmer unites
b.c.) focus: pyramids and Pyramid, Great Upper/Lower Egypt
tomb painting Pyramids, Bust of (3100 b.c.); Rameses II
Nefertiti battles
the Hittites (1274 b.c.);
Cleopatra dies (30 b.c.)
Greek and Hellenistic Greek idealism: Parthenon, Myron, Athens defeats Persia at
(850 b.c.–31 b.c.) balance, perfect Phidias, Polykleitos, Marathon (490 b.c.);
proportions; Praxiteles Peloponnesian
architectural Wars (431 b.c.–404
orders(Doric, Ionic, b.c.); Alexander the
Corinthian) Great’s conquests
(336 b.c.–323 b.c.)

Roman (500 b.c.– a.d. Roman realism: Augustus of Julius Caesar

476) practical and down to Primaporta, assassinated (44 b.c.);
earth; the arch Colosseum, Trajan’s Augustus proclaimed
Column, Emperor (27 b.c.);
Pantheon Diocletian splits Empire
(a.d. 292); Rome falls
(a.d. 476)

Indian, Chinese, and Serene, meditative art, Gu Kaizhi, Li Cheng, Birth of Buddha (563
Japanese(653 b.c.–a.d. and Arts of the Guo Xi, Hokusai, b.c.); Silk Road opens
1900) Floating World Hiroshige (1st century b.c.);
Buddhism spreads to
China (1st–2nd
centuries a.d.) and
Japan
(5th century a.d.)

Byzantine and Islamic Heavenly Byzantine Hagia Sophia, Justinian partly restores
(a.d. 476–a.d.1453) mosaics; Islamic Andrei Rublev, Western Roman Empire
architecture and Mosque of Córdoba, (a.d.
533–a.d. 562);
 amazing the Iconoclasm Controversy
maze-like design Alhambra (a.d. 726–a.d.
843); Birth of Islam (a.d.
610) and Muslim
Conquests (a.d.
632–a.d. 732)

Middle Ages (500– Celtic art, Carolingian St. Sernin, Durham Viking Raids (793–
1400) Renaissance, Cathedral, Notre 1066); Battle of Hastings
Romanesque, Gothic Dame, Chartres, (1066);
Cimabue, Crusades I–IV (1095–
Duccio, Giotto 1204); Black Death
(1347–1351); Hundred
Years’ War (1337–1453)

Early and High Rebirth of classical Ghiberti’s Doors, Gutenberg invents

Renaissance (1400– culture Brunelleschi, movable type (1447);
1550) Donatello, Botticelli, Turks conquer
Leonardo, Constantinople (1453);
Michelangelo, Columbus lands in New
Raphael World (1492); Martin
Luther starts
Reformation (1517)

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

Mannerism (1527– Art that breaks the Tintoretto, El Greco, Magellan

1580) rules; artifice over Pontormo, Bronzino, circumnavigates the
nature Cellini globe (1520–1522)

Baroque (1600–1750) Splendor and flourish Reubens, Thirty Years’ War

for God; art as a Rembrandt, between Catholics and
weapon in the religious Caravaggio, Palace Protestants
wars of Versailles (1618–1648)

Neoclassical (1750– Art that recaptures David, Ingres, Enlightenment (18th

1850) Greco-Roman grace Greuze, Canova century); Industrial
and grandeur Revolution
(1760–1850)

Romanticism (1780– The triumph of Caspar Friedrich, American Revolution

1850) imagination and Gericault, Delacroix, (1775–1783); French
individuality Turner, Benjamin Revolution
West (1789–1799); Napoleon
crowned emperor of
France (1803)

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

class and peasants; en Daumier, Millet revolutions of 1848
 plein air
rustic painting

Impressionism (1865– Capturing fleeting Monet, Manet, Franco-Prussian War

1885) effects of natural light Renoir, Pissarro, (1870–1871); Unification
Cassatt, Morisot, of Germany
Degas (1871)

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

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

Cubism, Futurism, Pre– and Post–World Picasso, Braque, Russian Revolution

Supremativism, War 1 art experiments: Leger, Boccioni, (1917); American
Constructivism, De Stijl new Severini, Malevich women franchised
(1905–1920) forms to express (1920)
modern life

Dada and Ridiculous art; painting Duchamp, Dalí, Disillusionment after

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

Abstract Expressionism Post–World War II: Gorky, Pollock, de Cold War and Vietnam
(1940s–1950s) and Pop pure abstraction and Kooning, Rothko, War (U.S. enters 1965);
Art expression Warhol, Lichtenstein U.S.S.R.
(1960s) without form; popular suppresses Hungarian
art absorbs revolt (1956)
consumerism Czechoslovakian revolt
(1968)

Postmodernism and Art without a center Gerhard Richter, Nuclear freeze

Deconstructivism and reworking and Cindy Sherman, movement; Cold War
(1970– ) mixing past styles Anselm Kiefer, Frank fizzles; Communism
Gehry, collapses
Zaha Hadid in Eastern Europe and
U.S.S.R. (1989–1991)