Prehistoric Art (c. 40,000 BCE–)
Cave paintings and carved figures believed to have served a ritual purpose — praying for a successful hunt or symbolizing fertility. No individual artists are known; the Lascaux cave paintings (France), Altamira cave paintings (Spain), and the Venus of Willendorf are the best-known surviving works.
Ancient Egyptian Art (c. 3100–332 BCE)
Rooted in belief in the afterlife, Egyptian art depicted pharaohs and gods in a highly formalized style, maintaining the distinctive convention of drawing the face in profile while the eye and torso face forward. No individual artists are recorded; Tutankhamun's golden mask, the Pyramids and Sphinx of Giza, and the bust of Nefertiti are its best-known works.
Ancient Greek and Roman Art (8th century BCE–5th century CE)
Sculpture and architecture pursuing ideal human proportion and balance developed here, becoming the aesthetic standard for all of later Western art. Roman art inherited Greek style while also developing realistic, lifelike portrait sculpture. Phidias created the Parthenon sculptures; Praxiteles created Hermes and the Infant Dionysus.
Medieval Art — Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic (5th–15th century)
With conveying Christian faith as its top priority, this era emphasized symbolism and grandeur over realistic depiction. Stained glass and mosaics in great cathedrals played a central artistic role. Giotto di Bondone, known for the frescoes of the Scrovegni Chapel, is regarded as the bridge between medieval and Renaissance art.
Renaissance (14th–16th century)
Reviving the humanism of ancient Greece and Rome, this era depicted humanity and nature realistically using perspective and anatomical knowledge, beginning in Florence and spreading across Europe. Leonardo da Vinci (Mona Lisa, The Last Supper), Michelangelo (Sistine Chapel ceiling, David), Raphael (The School of Athens), and Botticelli (The Birth of Venus) are its defining artists.
Mannerism (16th century)
A transitional style that deliberately distorted the balance and harmony of the Renaissance, using exaggerated, unstable compositions to convey tension, bridging the High Renaissance and the Baroque. El Greco's The Burial of the Count of Orgaz is representative.
Baroque (17th century)
A dramatic, dynamic style using strong light-and-shadow contrast to vividly convey emotion and movement, actively employed by the Catholic Church and absolute monarchies to display authority. Caravaggio (The Calling of Saint Matthew), Rembrandt (The Night Watch, self-portrait series), Vermeer (Girl with a Pearl Earring), and Rubens (The Descent from the Cross) are its defining artists.
Rococo (18th century)
In place of Baroque grandeur, this style captured aristocratic social life in pastel colors and a light, elegant mood, flourishing around the French court and nobility. Jean-Honoré Fragonard (The Swing) and Antoine Watteau (Pilgrimage to Cythera) are representative.
Neoclassicism (late 18th–early 19th century)
A reaction against Rococo excess that again pursued the restrained, rational beauty of ancient Greece and Rome, well suited to the heroic, solemn mood of the French Revolution and Napoleonic era. Jacques-Louis David (The Coronation of Napoleon, The Death of Marat) and Ingres (La Grande Odalisque) are representative.
Romanticism (early 19th century)
A style emphasizing individual emotion, imagination, and dramatic nature over reason, favoring intense feeling and exotic subjects in reaction to Neoclassical restraint. Eugène Delacroix (Liberty Leading the People), Caspar David Friedrich (Wanderer above the Sea of Fog), and J.M.W. Turner (The Fighting Temeraire) are representative.
Realism (mid-19th century)
A style that depicted reality as it was, without idealization, portraying the lives of workers and common people rather than heroes of myth or history — a striking departure at the time. Gustave Courbet (The Stone Breakers, The Painter's Studio) and Jean-François Millet (The Gleaners, The Angelus) are representative.
Impressionism (late 19th century)
An innovative style capturing the fleeting impression of a moment as light constantly changes, painted outdoors with quick brushstrokes rather than in a studio — made possible by the invention of tube paint. Claude Monet (Impression, Sunrise; Water Lilies series), Edgar Degas (The Ballet Class), Auguste Renoir (Bal du moulin de la Galette), and Mary Cassatt (The Bath) are representative.
Post-Impressionism (late 19th century)
A loose grouping of highly individual artists who inherited Impressionism's color experiments while each pursuing their own distinctive forms of expression, more a label for diverse painters who went their own ways after Impressionism than a single unified style. Vincent van Gogh (Starry Night, Sunflowers), Paul Cézanne (Still Life with Apples and Oranges, Mont Sainte-Victoire), Paul Gauguin (Tahitian Women), and Georges Seurat (A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, pointillism) are representative.
Art Nouveau (late 19th–early 20th century)
A style using nature-inspired curves and decorative patterns across painting, architecture, and crafts alike, applied broadly to everyday life from furniture to poster design. Gustav Klimt (The Kiss, Judith) and Alphonse Mucha (decorative poster works) are representative.
Fauvism (early 1900s)
A style departing from realistic color reproduction to directly express emotion through intense, primary colors, named after a critic's harsh remark that the rough, vivid coloring seemed like the work of "wild beasts" (fauves). Henri Matisse (Woman with a Hat, Dance) is representative.
Cubism (1907–1920s)
An innovative style that broke down a subject as seen from multiple angles at once, rather than a single viewpoint, and reassembled it on one canvas — a style regarded as hugely influential on nearly every abstract and modern art movement that followed. Pablo Picasso (Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Guernica) and Georges Braque (early Cubist still lifes) are representative.
Expressionism (1900s–1930s)
A style that violently expressed the artist's inner anxiety and emotion through distorted forms and color rather than depicting what the eye sees, developing mainly in Germany and Northern Europe and reflecting the anxious social mood around World War I. Edvard Munch (The Scream) and Egon Schiele (self-portrait series) are representative.
Dada and Surrealism (1910s–1930s)
Dada pursued radical anti-art in reaction against the authority of established art and the madness of war, while Surrealism captured the world of dreams and the unconscious on canvas, inheriting Dada's rebellious spirit and drawing on Freudian psychoanalysis to treat the unconscious and dreams as subject matter. Marcel Duchamp (Fountain, a readymade work exhibiting a urinal), Salvador Dalí (The Persistence of Memory, melting clocks), and René Magritte (The Treachery of Images, the pipe painting) are representative.
Abstract Expressionism (1940s–1950s)
A US-centered style with no concrete imagery, expressing the artist's inner state and the act of painting itself through spontaneous brushwork, color, and dripped paint — a style that symbolically marked the shift of the art world's center from Europe to the US (New York) after World War II. Jackson Pollock (large-scale drip-technique works flinging paint) and Mark Rothko (color-field abstraction) are representative.
Pop Art (1950s–1960s)
A style that drew imagery from popular culture and consumer society — comics, advertising, celebrities — into the subject matter of art, credited with dissolving the boundary between fine art and commercial imagery. Andy Warhol (Campbell's Soup Cans, Marilyn Monroe series) and Roy Lichtenstein (paintings enlarging comic-strip panels) are representative.
Conceptual Art and the Diversity of Contemporary Art (1960s–present)
A trend valuing the idea or concept embedded in a work over the form of the finished piece itself, dramatically diversifying the forms art takes — expanding well beyond the traditional media of painting and sculpture into video, installation, performance, and more. Nam June Paik (a pioneer of video art, TV Buddha) and Damien Hirst (an installation work of a shark preserved in formaldehyde) are representative.