Periods in Art History
Time Periods and Samples
Ancient Art Movements
Art Periods/
Characteristics
Movements
Chief Artists and Major
Historical Events
Works
Stone Age (30,000 b.c.–
Cave painting, fertility
Lascaux Cave Painting,
Ice Age ends (10,000 b.c.–
2500 b.c.)
goddesses, megalithic
Woman of Willendorf,
8,000 b.c.); New Stone Age
structures
Stonehenge
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 writing
539 b.c.)
stone relief
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 focus:
Imhotep, Step Pyramid,
Narmer unites Upper/Lower
b.c.)
pyramids and tomb painting
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
Chief Artists and Major
Historical Events
Works
Greek and Hellenistic (850
Greek idealism: balance,
Parthenon, Myron, Phidias,
Athens defeats Persia at
b.c.–31 b.c.)
perfect proportions;
Polykleitos, Praxiteles
Marathon (490 b.c.);
architectural orders(Doric,
Peloponnesian Wars (431
Ionic, Corinthian)
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 assassinated
and down to earth; the arch
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)
Indian, Chinese, and
Serene, meditative art, and
Gu Kaizhi, Li Cheng, Guo
Birth of Buddha (563 b.c.);
Japanese(653 b.c.–a.d.
Arts of the Floating World
Xi, Hokusai, Hiroshige
Silk Road opens (1st
1900)
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
Movements
Chief Artists and Major
Historical Events
Works
Byzantine and Islamic (a.d.
Heavenly Byzantine
Hagia Sophia, Andrei
Justinian partly restores
476–a.d.1453)
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
Chief Artists and Major
Historical Events
Works
Rebirth of classical culture
Renaissance (1400–1550)
Ghiberti's Doors,
Gutenberg invents movable
Brunelleschi, Donatello,
type (1447); Turks conquer
Botticelli, Leonardo,
Constantinople (1453);
Michelangelo, Raphael
Columbus lands in New
World (1492); Martin Luther
starts Reformation (1517)
Venetian and Northern
The Renaissance spreads
Bellini, Giorgione, Titian,
Council of Trent and
Renaissance (1430–1550)
north- ward to France, the
Dürer, Bruegel, Bosch, Jan
Counter-Reformation
Low Countries, Poland,
van Eyck, Rogier van der
(1545–1563); Copernicus
Germany, and England
Weyden
proves the Earth revolves
around the Sun (1543
Modern Art Movements
Art Periods/
Characteristics
Movements
Mannerism (1527–1580)
Baroque (1600–1750)
Neoclassical (1750–1850)
Chief Artists and Major
Historical Events
Works
Art that breaks the rules;
Tintoretto, El Greco,
Magellan circumnavigates
artifice over nature
Pontormo, Bronzino, Cellini
the globe (1520–1522)
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)
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
Movements
Chief Artists and Major
Historical Events
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
Movements
Chief Artists and Major
Historical Events
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
Movements
Chief Artists and Major
Historical Events
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)