Timeline of Art History

An Art Period is a phase in the development of the work of an artist, groups of artists or art movement.

The history of art is immense and the earliest cave paintings pre-date writing by almost 27,000 years!

Ancient Classical art

Minoan art

Ancient Greek art

Roman art

Ancient Egyptian colors

Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) | Baroque painter

Velázquez🎨 was born in 1599 in Seville in southern Spain, at that time an important city with a thriving artistic community. At the age of eleven, Velázquez was apprenticed to Francisco Pacheco, Seville's most significant artist and art theorist.

From Pacheco, Velázquez learned the technical skills of drawing and painting, still-life and portraiture and soon surpassed his master. Unlike the more traditional Pacheco, he responded to the techniques of modern innovators such as Caravaggio🎨. (Caravaggio was famous for his dark, dramatically lit works and un-idealised models. Copies of his paintings spread all over Europe.)

Baroque art | History and Sitemap

Baroque was the principal European style in the visual arts of the 17th century.

The term covers various national styles that range from the complex and dramatic Italian art of the 17th century to the restrained genre scenes, still-lifes and portraits characteristic of the Dutch Baroque.

In Italy, Caravaggio painted altarpieces and introduced innovations such as dramatic lighting effects that influenced painters like Artemisia Gentileschi. Other artists, such as the Giovanni Battista Gaulli and Pietro da Cortona, executed illusionistic ceiling paintings.

Gianlorenzo Bernini, the most celebrated Baroque artist in Rome, produced the famous baldacchino (central altar) of St Peter’s and groundbreaking sculptural works such as Apollo and Daphne.

In Spain, Francisco de Zurbarán executed pious religious paintings, and Diego Velázquez became the great painter of the Spanish Baroque.

In northern Europe, the Netherlands was divided into two parts, the Northern Netherlands (present day Netherlands) and the Southern Netherlands (present day Belgium and part of France), each usually referred to as Holland (North) and Flanders (South).

Johannes Vermeer | Girl with a Pearl Earring, 1665