Aboriginal rock art appears in Australia
-40000
Ancient cave paintings discovered
-24999
Egyptian pyramid decorations
-2899
Fresco's from ancient Crete
-1699
Olmec colossal heads
-1349
Venus of Willendorf statuette discovered
-29999
Narmer Palette discovered in Egypt
-14999
Early developments in Chinese calligraphy
-2529
Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaton artistic works
-1549
Greek Geometric style art
-1149
Assyrian sculpture
-899
Ancient Greek black-figure pottery
-700
Cleitias paints François vase
-649
Development of red-figure pottery
-549
The Doryphoros by Polyclitus
-489
Scythian weavers produce embroidery
-446
Praxiteles sculpts 'Hermes and the Infant Dionysus'
-399
Roman Nobels start collecting art
-279
Agesander of Rhodes
-149
Ancient Greek pottery
-874
Archaic Greek art
-699
Exekias becomes master of black pottery painting
-569
The Brygos Painter
-529
Greek sculptor Phidias constructs Parthenon
-449
Nok of Africa sculptures
-400
Chares of Lindos completes Colossus of Rhodes
-349
Venus de Milo carved
-249
Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius
-39
Portland Vase of Roman cameo glass
81
Development of Coptic art
151
Byzantine art develops
481
Manuscript illumination develops
651
Easter Island statues created
700
Iconoclastic Controversy bans religious imagery
712
Book of Kells completed
769
Roman catacomb Christian art
101
Merovingian art
201
Insular art of the British Isles
551
Islamic art develops new styles
681
Mozarabic art develops
701
Carolingian architecture and art
731
Arabesque style art is developed
801
Bernward Doors commissioned
1001
Bayeux Tapestry completed
1054
Gothic art
1084
Japanese sculptor Jōchō
1016
Romanesque art develops
1076
Autun Cathedral completed
1131
Japanese sculptor Unkei
1151
Bury Bible completed
1121
Sculptures at Chartres Cathedral completed
1136
Muqi Fachang paints Six Persimmons
1169
Giotto di Bondone paints frescoes
1280
Frescos painted by Ambrogio Lorenzetti
1326
Egg Tempera painting developed
1396
Belleville Breviary produced
1301
Tomb of Philip the Bold completed
1338
Florentine architect Filippo Brunelleschi
1403
Limbourg brothers complete masterpiece
1416
Gates of Paradise completed
1421
Holy Trinity fresco by Masaccio
1426
Jan van Eyck paints The Madonna of Chancellor Rolin
1429
Leon Battista Alberti publishes De Pictura
1435
Paolo Uccello paints The Battle of San Romano
1455
Jacopo Bellini defines Renaissance style
1461
Martin Schongauer engraves Temptation of St. Anthony
1480
Venetian painters develop modern oil painting
1496
Lorenzo Ghiberti works on Baptistery of San Giovanni
1401
Donatello carves marble statues
1414
Intaglio engraving developed
1417
Donatello's David completed
1425
Robert Campin paints Mérode Altarpiece
1428
Rogier van der Weyden works on his Descent from the Cross
1433
Andrea Mantegna works on Ovetari Chapel
1436
Piero della Francesca completes Flagellation of Christ
1456
Giovanni Bellini paints St. Francis in Ecstasy
1471
Leonardo da Vinci completes The Last Supper
1481
Michelangelo sculpts David
1501
Albrecht Dürer engraves Adam and Eve
1504
Hieronymus Bosch completes The Garden of Earthly Delights
1505
Raphael begins School of Athens fresco
1508
Albrecht Altdorfer pioneers pure landscape painting
1516
Mannerism style emerges
1520
The Ambassadors painted by Hans Holbein
1531
Antonio da Correggio dies
1534
Benvenuto Cellini completes masterpiece
1535
Albrecht Dürer paints self portrait
1500
Leonardo da Vinci paints Mona Lisa
1502
Giorgione paints The Tempest
1505
Michelangelo begins Sistine Chapel
1506
Matthias Grünewald creates Isenheim Altarpiece
1509
Titian begins Bacchus and Ariadne
1518
Lucas Cranach the Elder paints Venus
1521
Parmigianino paints Madonna of the Long Neck
1534
Michelangelo paints Sistine Chapel
1534
Bronzino creates Venus painting
1541
Pieter Bruegel the Elder paints Peasant Dance
1546
El Greco paints Assumption of the Virgin
1574
Annibale Carracci paints Galleria ceiling fresco
1595
Paolo Veronese paints Feast in the House of Levi
1569
Tintoretto finishes his Last Supper
1578
Caravaggio paints The Conversion of Saint Paul
1598
Rubens paints The Elevation of the Cross
1602
Willem Claesz Heda paints Vanitas
1614
Artemisia Gentileschi paints women
1625
Zurbarán creates Holy House of Nazareth
1629
Nicolas Poussin begins Seven Sacraments
1634
Georges de La Tour paints Saint Sebastian
1636
Claude Lorrain paints landscape masterpiece
1646
Guido Reni begins Aurora fresco
1608
Still life painting becomes popular
1622
Frans Hals paints Gypsy Girl
1626
Pietro da Cortona paints fresco
1631
Anthony Van Dyck Portrait of Charles I
1635
Gian Lorenzo Bernini carves Ecstasy of St. Theresa
1645
Diego Velàzquez paints Las Meninas
1649
Rembrandt paints Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph
1656
Jacob van Ruisdael paints Jewish Cemetery
1659
Vermeer begins Woman with a Water Jug
1657
Antoine Watteau paints La Partie Quarree
1661
Chardin paints Saying Grace
1714
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo paints Würzburg fresco
1744
William Hogarth completes Marriage A-la-Mode
1741
Benjamin West paints The Death of General Wolfe
1767
Jacques-Louis David paints Oath of the Horatii
1782
The Louvre opens in Paris
1786
Alois Senefelder invents lithography
1796
Jean-Honoré Fragonard paints The Swing
1751
Henry Fuseli creates The Nightmare
1772
Mrs. Sheridan painted by Thomas Gainsborough
1785
William Blake paints Pity
1794
Thomas Bruce takes Elgin Marbles from Greece
1799
The Valpinçon Bather painted by Ingres
1803
John Constable paints the English countryside
1815
Caspar David Friedrich creates Moonrise by the Sea
1819
Eugène Delacroix paints Jewish Wedding
1839
3 British painters form Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
1843
Francisco de Goya paints 'The Third of May 1808'
1809
The Raft of the Medusa painted by Théodore Géricault
1816
Thomas Cole creates View of Schroon Mountain
1823
J.M.W. Turner paints epic Snow Storm
1840
The Stone Breakers by Gustave Courbet
1849
Jean-François Millet paints The Sower
1850
Honoré Daumier paints Third-Class Carriage
1856
Souvenir de Mortefontaine painted by Camille Corot
1864
Painting outdoors becomes popular
1866
Monet creates Impression, Sunrise
1872
Impressionism art movement formed
1874
Pierre-Auguste Renoir exhibit opens
1876
Sir Edward Burne-Jones exhibited
1877
Paul Cézanne pioneers Postimpressionism
1878
The Sacred Grove by Puvis de Chavannes
1881
Neo-Impressionism formation
1884
Winslow Homer paints The Herring Net
1885
van Gogh creates masterpiece Starry Night
1887
Edvard Munch paints The Scream
1891
Henry O. Tanner paints The Banjo Lesson
1893
Aubrey Beardsley illustrates Oscar Wilde's Salomé
1894
Alfred Stieglitz founds Photo-Secession
1897
Barbizon school of painters formed
1851
The Luncheon on the Grass by Manet
1863
Photos of the American Civil War captured
1865
James McNeill Whistler paints Whistler's Mother
1871
Timothy H. O'Sullivan captures the outdoors
1873
Thomas Eakins masterpiece The Gross Clinic
1875
Edgar Degas creates famous works
1876
Berthe Morisot paints with color
1877
Auguste Rodin begins The Gates of Hell
1879
Famous motion photos by Eadweard Muybridge
1884
Expressionism art movement forms
1885
Georges Seurat paints a Sunday afternoon
1886
Paul Gauguin paints Pacific scenes
1890
The Child's Bath painted by Mary Cassatt
1892
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec paints Moulin Rouge scene
1893
Louis Comfort Tiffany designs Favrile glass
1895
Pablo Picasso paints Woman Ironing
1903
Gustav Klimt creates The Kiss
1906
Manifesto of Futurism published
1909
Mont Sainte-Victoire studies by Cézanne
1902
The Joy of Life painted by Matisse
1905
Brâncuși carves The Kiss sculpture
1908
George Bellows paints Stag at Sharkey's
1909
Wassily Kandinsky paints Improvisation XIV
1910
Oskar Kokoschka paints masterpiece
1910
Synthetic Cubism period commences
1912
1913 Armory Show
1913
Giorgio de Chirico paints The Red Tower
1913
Joseph Stella paints Brooklyn Bridge
1917
Tatlin's Tower designed
1918
Picasso & Braque develop Cubism
1910
Marc Chagall paints I and the Village
1911
Marcel Duchamp paints Nude Descending a Staircase
1912
Umberto Boccioni sculpts masterpeice
1913
Jacques Lipschitz carves 'Man with a Guitar'
1914
Readymades series by Marcel Duchamp
1917
Twittering Machine painted by Paul Klee
1921
André Breton writes Surrealist Manifesto
1924
Georgia O'Keeffe paints Black Iris
1925
Constantin Brancusi sculpts Bird in Space
1927
NYC MoMA built
1929
Art style Precisionism emerges
1920
Albert Renger-Patzsch photos
1923
Käthe Kollwitz work speaks volumes
1924
László Moholy-Nagy records photograms
1926
René Magritte paints The Betrayal of Images
1929
John Heartfield creates anti-Nazi images
1929
Charles Demuth creates Buildings, Lancaster
1930
Salvador Dalí paints The Persistence of Memory
1931
Group f/64 formed
1932
Henri Cartier-Bresson documents war
1933
Degenerate Art exhibition staged
1937
Grandma Moses becomes famous
1938
Diego Rivera mural works
1930
Socialist Realism emerges
1932
Joan Miró paints 'Composition'
1933
Dorothea Lange captures Migrant Mother
1934
Picasso paints Guernica
1937
Alexander Calder sculpts Lobster Trap and Fish Tail
1939
Edward Weston publishes retrospective
1940
Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century Gallery opens
1942
Arshile Gorky paints The Liver Is the Cock's Comb
1944
Abstract Expressionism emerges
1946
Nighthawks painted by Edward Hopper
1941
Ansel Adams captures nature
1943
Henry Moore sculpts Reclining Figure
1945
Aaron Siskind photographs Chicago
1949
Jackson Pollock creates Autumn Rhythm
1950
Henri Matisse creates cutouts
1950
Helen Frankenthaler exhibits
1951
Mark Rothko paints Orange and Yellow
1955
Victor Vasarely creates Vega patterns
1957
Jasper Johns exhibits flag art
1958
Robert Frank publishes The Americans
1959
Willem de Kooning debuts Woman series
1950
Jean Dubuffet celebrated in USA
1950
Francis Bacon paints Figure with Meat
1952
Richard Hamilton starts Pop Art Movement
1956
Diane Arbus captures NYC
1957
Hans Hofmann paints Smaragd Red and Germinating Yellow
1959
Roy Lichtenstein gains popularity
1963
Frank Stella paints Empress of India
1964
Joseph Beuys art performance
1969
Andy Warhol prints Marilyn Diptych
1960
Ellsworth Kelly paints Red Blue Green
1963
Minimalism movement emerges
1966
Anselm Kiefer paints To the Unknown Painter
1978
Cindy Sherman debuts Untitled Film Stills
1975
Robert Mapplethorpe photos draw criticism
1984
Lucian Freud exhibits nudes
1990
Christo wraps Berlin Reichstag
1995
Jackson Pollock exhibit at MoMA
1996
National Gallery exhibits Mark Rothko
1998
National Gallery shows Alfred Stieglitz prints
1999
Sistine Chapel restoration completed
1994
Claude Monet exhibit attracts many
1995
Chuck Close tour begins
1998
Mary Cassatt exhibit opens
1998
Cézanne work sells for $60.5 Million USD
1999
Pipilotti Rist stages show
2000
Tate Modern opens in London
2000
Getty Museum shows August Sander's work
2001
Henri Loyrette now director of Louvre
2001
Mysterious black monolith appears in Magnuson Park
2001
Leonardo da Vinci’s Madonna of the Yarnwinder stolen
2003
The Chichu Art Museum opens
2004
The Gates Art installation opens in NYC
2005
Yue Minjun's Execution sells for £2.9 million
2007
Alice Neel exhibit opens
2000
Sotheby's begins selling over internet
2000
Freestyle exhibition introduces concept of “Post-Black” art
2001
Realist painter Balthus dies
2001
Documenta11 expands the global scope of contemporary art
2002
50th Venice Biennale shifts curatorial practice
2003
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe opens
2005
Rijksmuseum museum hosts All the Rembrandts
2006
Fernand Léger painting, Woman and Child (1921), disappears
2008
Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds installation opens at Tate Modern
2010
Museo Soumaya opens in Mexico City
2011
Nazi-looted art discovered in Munich
2012
Museo Júmex opens in Mexico City
2013
Salvator Mundi paitning sold for $450.3 million
2017
Marina Abramović's The Artist Is Present at MoMA redefines performance art
2010
Ai Weiwei is arrested by Chinese authorities
2011
Francis Bacon paintings sell for $142.4 million
2013
56th Venice Biennale – “All the World’s Futures”
2015
Banana duct-taped to wall sells for $6.2 million
2019
Kehinde Wiley exhibition at the de Young Museum
2023
Caspar David Friedrich exhibition at The Met
2025
60th Venice Biennale
2024