Art History Periods
Art Periods/
Movements
Characteristics
Chief Artists and Major Works
Historical Events
Stone Age (30,000 b.c.–2500 b.c.)
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.)
Mesopotamian (3500 b.c.–539 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
Egyptian (3100 b.c.–30 b.c.)
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 and Hellenistic (850 b.c.–31 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.)
Roman (500 b.c.– a.d. 476)
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)
Indian, Chinese, and Japanese(653 b.c.–a.d. 1900)
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.)
Byzantine and Islamic (a.d. 476–a.d.1453)
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
Movements
Characteristics
Chief Artists and Major Works
Historical Events
Stone Age (30,000 b.c.–2500 b.c.)
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.)
Mesopotamian (3500 b.c.–539 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
Egyptian (3100 b.c.–30 b.c.)
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 and Hellenistic (850 b.c.–31 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.)
Roman (500 b.c.– a.d. 476)
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)
Indian, Chinese, and Japanese(653 b.c.–a.d. 1900)
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.)
Byzantine and Islamic (a.d. 476–a.d.1453)
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
Bibliography: "A preliminary drawing for a wallpaper pattern is more highly finished than this seascape." Louis Leroy, 1874, criticism of Monet 's Impression, Sunrise Gustave Caillebotte: Paris, a Rainy Day, 1877 Fauvism Henri Matisse, Portrait of Madame Matisse (The Green Stripe), 1906, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark