art history timeline

• Art Periods / Movements

  • Stone Age
  • Mesopotamian
  • Egyptian
  • Greek and Hellenistic
  • Roman
  • Indian, Chinese, and Japanese
  • Byzantine and Islamic
  • Middle Ages
  • Early and High Renaissance
  • Venetian and Northern Renaissance
  • Mannerism
  • Baroque
  • Neoclassical
  • Romanticism
  • Realism
  • Impressionism
  • Post-Impressionism
  • Fauvism and Expressionism
  • Cubism, Futurism, Supremativism, Constructivism, De Stijl
  • Dada and Surrealism
  • Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art
  • Postmodernism and Deconstructivism
• Stone Age


  Cave painting, fertility goddesses, megalithic structures
• Stone Age


  • Lascaux Cave painting
  • Woman of Willendorf
  • Stonehenge
• Stone Age


  30,000 BC – 2,500 BC
• Ice age ends (10,000 BC – 8,000 BC)
• New Stone Age and first permanent settlements (8,000 BC – 2,500 BC)
• Mesopotamian


  Warrior art and narration in stone relief
• Mesopotamian


  3,500 BC – 539 BC
• Sumerians invent writing (3400 BC)
• Hammurabi writes his law code (1780 BC)
• Abraham founds monotheism
• Egyptian


  Art with an afterlife focus: pyramids and tomb painting
• Egyptian


  3100 BC – 30 BC
• Narmer unites Upper/Lower Egypt (3100 BC)
• Rameses II battles the Hittites (1274 BC)
• Cleopatra dies (30 BC)
• Greek and Hellenistic


  Greek idealism: balance, perfect proportions; architectural orders (Doric, Ionic, Corinthian)
• Greek and Hellenistic


  850 BC – 31 BC
• Athens defeats Persia at Marathon (490 BC)
• Peloponnesian Wars (431 BC – 404 BC)
• Alexander the Great's conquests (336 BC – 323 BC)
• Roman


  Roman realism: practical and down to earth; the arch
• Roman


  500 BC – AD 476
• Julius Caesar assassinated (44 BC)
• Augustus proclaimed Emperor (27 BC)
• Diocletian splits Empire (AD 292)
• Rome falls
• Indian, Chinese, and Japanese

  Serene, meditative art, and Arts of the Floating World
• Indian, Chinese, and Japanese

  653 BC – AD 1900
• Birth of Buddha (563 BC)
• Silk Road opens (1st century BC)
• Buddhism spreads to China (1st-2nd centuries AD) and Japan (5th century AD)
• Byzantine and Islamic


  Heavenly Byzantine mosaics; Islamic architecture and amazing maze-like design
• Byzantine and Islamic


  AD 476 – AD 1453
• Justinian partly restores Western Roman Empire (AD 533 – AD 562)
• Iconoclasm Controversy (AD 726 – AD 843)
• Birth of Islam (AD 610) and Muslim Conquests (AD 632 – AD 732)
• Middle Ages


  Celtic art, Carolingian Renaissance, Romanesque, Gothic
• Middle Ages


  500-1400
• Viking Raids (793-1066)