Periods in Art History

Time Periods and Samples

 Ancient Art Movements
Art Periods/ Characteristics
Movements
Stone Age (30,000 b.c.– Cave painting, fertility
2500 b.c.) goddesses, megalithic
structures
Mesopotamian (3500 b.c.– Warrior art and narration in
539 b.c.) stone relief
Egyptian (3100 b.c.–30 Art with an afterlife focus:
b.c.) pyramids and tomb painting
Chief Artists and Major Historical Events
Works
Lascaux Cave Painting, Ice Age ends (10,000 b.c.–
Woman of Willendorf, 8,000 b.c.); New Stone Age
Stonehenge and first permanent
settlements (8000 b.c.–
2500 b.c.)
Standard of Ur, Gate of Sumerians invent writing
Ishtar, Stele of (3400 b.c.); Hammurabi
Hammurabi's Code writes his law code (1780
b.c.); Abraham founds
monotheism
Imhotep, Step Pyramid, Narmer unites Upper/Lower
Great Pyramids, Bust of Egypt (3100 b.c.);
Nefertiti Rameses II battles the
Hittites (1274 b.c.);
Cleopatra dies (30 b.c.)
 Ancient Art Movements 2
Art Periods/ Characteristics
Movements
Greek and Hellenistic (850 Greek idealism: balance,
b.c.–31 b.c.) perfect proportions;
architectural orders(Doric,
Ionic, Corinthian)
Roman (500 b.c.– a.d. 476) Roman realism: practical
and down to earth; the arch
Indian, Chinese, and Serene, meditative art, and
Japanese(653 b.c.–a.d. Arts of the Floating World
1900)
Chief Artists and Major Historical Events
Works
Parthenon, Myron, Phidias, Athens defeats Persia at
Polykleitos, Praxiteles Marathon (490 b.c.);
Peloponnesian Wars (431
b.c.–404 b.c.); Alexander
the Great's conquests (336
b.c.–323 b.c.)
Augustus of Primaporta, Julius Caesar assassinated
Colosseum, Trajan's (44 b.c.); Augustus
Column, Pantheon proclaimed Emperor (27
b.c.); Diocletian splits
Empire (a.d. 292); Rome
falls (a.d. 476)
Gu Kaizhi, Li Cheng, Guo Birth of Buddha (563 b.c.);
Xi, Hokusai, Hiroshige Silk Road opens (1st
century b.c.); Buddhism
spreads to China (1st–2nd
centuries a.d.) and Japan
(5th century a.d.)
 Ancient Art Movements 3
Art Periods/ Characteristics Chief Artists and Major Historical Events
Movements Works

Byzantine and Islamic (a.d.
476–a.d.1453)
Heavenly Byzantine Hagia Sophia, Andrei Justinian partly restores
mosaics; Islamic Rublev, Mosque of Western Roman Empire
architecture and amazing Córdoba, the Alhambra (a.d. 533–a.d. 562);
maze-like design 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 (793–1066);
Renaissance, Cathedral, Notre Dame, Battle of Hastings (1066);
Romanesque, Gothic Chartres, Cimabue, Duccio, Crusades I–IV (1095–
Giotto 1204); Black Death (1347–
1351); Hundred Years' War
(1337–1453)
 Renaissance
Art Periods/ Characteristics
Movements
Early and High Rebirth of classical culture
Renaissance (1400–1550)
Venetian and Northern The Renaissance spreads
Renaissance (1430–1550) north- ward to France, the
Low Countries, Poland,
Germany, and England
Chief Artists and Major
Works
Ghiberti's Doors,
Brunelleschi, Donatello,
Botticelli, Leonardo,
Michelangelo, Raphael
Bellini, Giorgione, Titian,
Dürer, Bruegel, Bosch, Jan
van Eyck, Rogier van der
Weyden
Historical Events
Gutenberg invents movable
type (1447); Turks conquer
Constantinople (1453);
Columbus lands in New
World (1492); Martin Luther
starts Reformation (1517)
Council of Trent and
Counter-Reformation
(1545–1563); Copernicus
proves the Earth revolves
around the Sun (1543
 Modern Art Movements
Art Periods/ Characteristics Chief Artists and Major Historical Events
Movements Works

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

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

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

Romanticism (1780–1850) 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 (1848–1900) Celebrating working class Corot, Courbet, Daumier, European democratic
and peasants; en plein air Millet revolutions of 1848
rustic painting
 Modern Art Movements
Art Periods/ Characteristics Chief Artists and Major Historical Events
Movements Works

Impressionism (1865– Capturing fleeting effects of Monet, Manet, Renoir, Franco-Prussian War
1885) natural light Pissarro, Cassatt, Morisot, (1870–1871); Unification of
Degas Germany (1871)

Post-Impressionism (1885– A soft revolt against Van Gogh, Gauguin, Belle Époque (late-19th-
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 (1914–
1935) emotion distorting form 1918)
 Modern Art Movments 2
Art Periods/ Characteristics Chief Artists and Major Historical Events
Movements Works

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

Dada and Surrealism Ridiculous art; painting Duchamp, Dalí, Ernst, Disillusionment after World
(1917–1950) dreams and exploring the Magritte, de Chirico, Kahlo War I; The Great
unconscious Depression (1929–1938);
World War II (1939–1945)
and Nazi horrors; atomic
bombs dropped on Japan
(1945)
 Post Modern Art
Art Periods/ Characteristics Chief Artists and Major Historical Events
Movements Works

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

Postmodernism and Art without a center and Gerhard Richter, Cindy Nuclear freeze movement;
Deconstructivism (1970– ) reworking and mixing past Sherman, Anselm Kiefer, Cold War fizzles;
styles Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid Communism collapses in
Eastern Europe and
U.S.S.R. (1989–1991)