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

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

Art with an afterlife focus: pyramids and tomb painting
Imhotep, Step Pyramid, Great Pyramids, Bust of Nefertiti
Narmer unites Upper/Lower Egypt (3100 b.c.); Rameses II battles the Hittites (1274 b.c.); Cleopatra dies (30 b.c.)

Greek idealism: balance, perfect proportions; architectural orders(Doric, Ionic, Corinthian)
Parthenon, Myron, Phidias, Polykleitos, Praxiteles
Athens defeats Persia at Marathon (490 b.c.); Peloponnesian Wars (431 b.c.–404 b.c.); Alexander the Great’s conquests (336 b.c.–323 b.c.)View photos of Greece

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

Serene, meditative art, and Arts of the Floating World
Gu Kaizhi, Li Cheng, Guo Xi, Hokusai, Hiroshige
Birth of Buddha (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.)

Heavenly Byzantine mosaics; Islamic architecture and amazing maze-like design
Hagia Sophia, Andrei Rublev, Mosque of Córdoba, the Alhambra
Justinian partly restores Western Roman Empire (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)View photos of Spain

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

Rebirth of classical culture
Ghiberti’s Doors, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Raphael
Gutenberg invents movable type (1447); Turks conquer Constantinople (1453); Columbus lands in New World (1492); Martin Luther starts Reformation (1517)View art of: Filippo Brunelleschi, Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Raffaello Sanzio

The Renaissance spreads north- ward to France, the Low Countries, Poland, Germany, and England
Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Dürer, Bruegel, Bosch, Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden
Council of Trent and Counter-Reformation (1545–1563); Copernicus proves the Earth revolves around the Sun (1543)View art of: Giovanni Bellini, Tiziano, Jan Van Eyck
View photos of Venice

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

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

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

The triumph of imagination and individuality
Caspar Friedrich, Gericault, Delacroix, Turner, Benjamin West
American Revolution (1775–1783); French Revolution (1789–1799); Napoleon crowned emperor of France (1803)View art of: Eugene Delacroix

Celebrating working class and peasants; en plein air rustic painting
Corot, Courbet, Daumier, Millet
European democratic revolutions of 1848

Capturing fleeting effects of natural light
Monet, Manet, Renoir, Pissarro, Cassatt, Morisot, Degas
Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871); Unification of Germany (1871)View art of: Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas

A soft revolt against Impressionism
Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne, Seurat
Belle Époque (late-19th-century Golden Age); Japan defeats Russia (1905)View art of: Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cezanne

Harsh colors and flat surfaces (Fauvism); emotion distorting form
Matisse, Kirchner, Kandinsky, Marc
Boxer Rebellion in China (1900); World War (1914–1918)View art of: Henri Matisse, Wassily Kandinsky

Pre and Post–World War 1 art experiments: new forms to express modern life
Picasso, Braque, Leger, Boccioni, Severini, Malevich
Russian Revolution (1917); American women franchised (1920)View art of: Pablo Picasso, Umberto Boccioni

Ridiculous art; painting dreams and exploring the unconscious
Duchamp, Dalí, Ernst, Magritte, de Chirico, Kahlo. Disillusionment after World War I; The Great Depression (1929–1938); World War II (1939–1945) and Nazi horrors; atomic bombs dropped on Japan (1945)View art of: Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, Giorgio De Chirico, Frida Kahlo

Post–World War II: pure abstraction and expression without form; popular art absorbs consumerism
Gorky, Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko, Warhol, Lichtenstein
Cold War and Vietnam War (U.S. enters 1965); U.S.S.R. suppresses Hungarian revolt (1956) Czechoslovakian revolt (1968)Chronology of Jackson Pollock
View art of: Andy Warhol

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