Art History Timeline

  • Paleolithic Art -The earliest known art, produced roughly between 40,000 and 10,000 BC, during the most recent ice age or the Old Stone Age.
  • Egyptian beginnings
  • Stone age of Italy and Sicily
  • Mesolithic Art – Middle Stone Age about 10,000 years ago
  • Neolithic Art – The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age began in Asia around 7000 B.C
  • Yang-Shao Culture, Neolithic culture that flourished in China about 3950-1700 BC.
  • Irish Art, 2500 BC
  • Japanese Art. 3000 BC
  • The Bronze Age – between the Stone Age and the Iron Age, when most tools and weapons were made of bronze.

Related sites: The cave of LascauxArt History for Artists and Kids, Wine Cellar Innovations – Art History Resources

  • Cycladic Culture, unique and distinctive Greek civilization that flourished from about 3200 to 2000 BC
  • Indian Art – the art produced on the Indian subcontinent from about the 3rd millennium BC
  • Indus Valley Civilization, 2500-1700 BC, earliest known civilization of South Asia
  • Pre-Columbian Art – Art of the indigenous civilizations of Mesoamerica, the Andes and neighboring cultures before the 16th century AD.
  • Etruscan Art, early Italian Art to 1st cent. B.C.
  • Greek Art about 1100 BC to the 1st century BC.
  • Roman art – 500 BC.
  • African Art -500 – 200 B.C.
  • Eskimo Art – The art of the Eskimo peoples emerged about 2,000 years ago in the Bering Sea area and in Canada.
  • Coptic Art, artwork of the Copts, or Egyptian Christians, from the 3rd to the 12th century
  • Native American Art, the diverse traditional arts of the indigenous peoples of North America.
  • Oceanic art, works produced by the island peoples of the S and NW Pacific
  • Islamic Art, beginning in the 7th century AD
  • Anglo-Saxon Art, art produced in England by invading Germanic peoples from the 7th century to the Norman conquest in 1066.
  • American Art- beginning in the 17th Century
  • Canadian Art – beginning in the 17th Century

Related site: Art History Resources on the Web

  • Early Christian Art – Biblical figures on catacomb walls in Rome from the early 3rd century
  • Medieval Art (or Art of the Middle Ages)
  • The Middle Ages spans the time from the 5th century A.D to the 15th century
  • Romanesque period – 11th and 12th centuries
  • Gothic style – 12th to 16th centuries (The International Gothic style emerged by the end of the 14th century)
  • The Italian Renaissance – In Italy the Renaissance emerged in the 14th century and reached its height in the 15th and 16th century. elsewhere in Europe it dated from the 15th to the mid-17th century
  • The Early Italian Renaissance
  • The High Renaissance
  • Mannerism ( Late Renaissance)
  • Northern European Renaissance Painting – the northern countries, such as Germany, the Lowlands (Flanders and the Netherlands), England, France, and Spain
  • Baroque
  • Early Baroque (c.1590-c.1625)
  • High Baroque (c.1625-c.1660)
  • Late Baroque (c.1660-c.1725)
  • Rococo Style -18th-century
  • Romanticism – late 18th and 19th century
  • England, France, Germany, United States
  • Barbizon School – group of French painters, from about 1830 to 1870
  • Neoclassical Art – art produced in Europe and North America from about 1750 through the early 1800s, marked by the emulation of Greco-Roman forms.
  • Nazarenes – young German artists who formed a brotherhood in Rome in 1810 to restore Christian art to its medieval purity.
  • Pre-Raphaelites – English brotherhood formed in 1848 to protest the formula-driven art of the Royal Academy
  • Realism – began in the mid-19th century
  • Impressionism – 1874 – 1886
  • Symbolist Movement – late 19th century.
  • Neoimpressionism or Pointillism – late 19th century
  • Post-Impressionism – 1886 – 1910

Related sites: World Art TreasuresCarol Gerten’s Fine Art

  • Modern Art – terms roughly designating 20th-century art, comprising many movements, styles, and schools.
  • Fauvism – 1905-1909
  • Expressionism – 1906-1919
  • Cubism – 1909-1926
  • Futurism – 1909-1918
  • Suprematism – about 1913
  • Dadaism – 1916-1922
  • Surrealism – 1924-1938
  • De Stijl – 1916-1931
  • Constructivism – 1917-1924
  • Abstract Expressionism – 1940’s
  • Pop Art – 1961-1968
  • Kinetic Art – 1950’s-1960’s
  • Op Art – 1964-1967
  • Minimalism – 1966-1970
  • Conceptual Art – 1960’s and 70’s

Related sites: Invaluable – Western Art Movements and Their Impact, The Art Story: Movements and Styles in Modern Art