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200
The Laocoon Group
The statue of Laocoön and His Sons, also called the Laocoön Group, is a monumental sculpture in marble now in the Vatican Museums, Rome. The statue is attributed by the Roman author Pliny the Elder to three sculptors from the island of Rhodes: Agesander, Athenodoros and Polydorus. It shows the Trojan priest Laocoön and his sons Antiphantes and Thymbraeus being strangled by sea serpents. -
200
Doryphoros
The Doryphoros is one of the best known Greek sculptures of the classical era in Western Art and an early example of Greek classical contrapposto. The lost bronze original would have been made at approximately 450-400 BCE. -
200
Winged Victory of Samothrace
The Winged Victory of Samothrace, also called the Nike of Samothrace, is a 2nd century BC marble sculpture of the Greek goddess Nike (Victory). Since 1884, it has been prominently displayed at the Louvre and is one of the most celebrated sculptures in the world. -
200
Kouros - Statue of a Youth
This noble figure of a youth is one of the earliest freestanding marble statues from Attica, the region around Athens. It is a type of sculpture known as a kouros (male youth), characteristically depicted nude with the left leg striding forward and hands clenched at the side. Most kouroi were made in the Archaic period, between the late seventh and early fifth centuries B.C., and are believed to have served as grave markers or as dedications in the sanctuary of a god. -
200
Venus of Willendorf
The Venus of Willendorf, also known as the Woman of Willendorf, is an 11 cm (4.3 in) high statuette of a female figure estimated to have been made between 24,000 and 22,000 BCE. It was discovered in 1908 by archaeologist Josef Szombathy at a paleolithic site near Willendorf, a village in Lower Austria near the city of Krems. It is carved from an oolitic limestone that is not local to the area, and tinted with red ochre. -
230
Portrait head of Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
Although his name claimed his descent from early emperors, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (r. 211–17 A.D.), nicknamed Caracalla, soon abandoned the iconographic traditions of the Antonine dynasty that had been employed in his early portraits in favor of a military style characterized by closely cropped curls and a stubble beard. -
Period: Jan 1, 1347 to
Renaissance
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Jan 1, 1434
Jan van Eyck: Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife
This painting is believed to be a portrait of the Italian merchant Giovanni Arnolfini and his wife, presumably in their home in the Flemish city of Bruges. It is considered one of the most original and complex paintings in Western art history. Both signed and dated by Van Eyck in 1434, it is, with the Ghent Altarpiece by the same artist and his brother Hubert, the oldest very famous panel painting to have been executed in oils rather than in tempera. -
Jan 1, 1440
Johannes Gutenberg invents printing press
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Jan 1, 1440
Donatello – David
Donatello's bronze statue of David (circa 1440s) is famous as the first unsupported standing work of bronze cast during the Renaissance, and the first freestanding nude male sculpture made since antiquity. It depicts David with an enigmatic smile, posed with his foot on Goliath's severed head just after defeating the giant. The youth is completely naked, apart from a laurel-topped hat and boots, bearing the sword of Goliath. -
Jan 1, 1447
Pope Nicholas V appointed, he begins a major program of rebuilding.
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Jan 1, 1452
Birth of Leonardo da Vinci.
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Jan 1, 1486
Botticelli: The Birth of Venus
The Birth of Venus is a painting by Sandro Botticelli. It depicts the goddess Venus, having emerged from the sea as a fully grown woman, arriving at the sea-shore. The painting is held in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. -
Jan 1, 1488
Portuguese sailors led by Bartolomeu Diaz round the Cape of Good Hope.
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Jan 1, 1499
Michelangelo – Pietà
The Pietà is a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture by Michelangelo Buonarroti, housed in St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City. It is the first of a number of works of the same theme by the artist. The statue was commissioned for the French cardinal Jean de Billheres, who was a representative in Rome. T -
Jan 1, 1512
Michelangelo: The Sistine Chapel Ceiling
The Sistine Chapel ceiling, painted by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512, at the commission of Pope Julius II, is a cornerstone work of High Renaissance art. The ceiling is that of the large Papal Chapel built within the Vatican between 1477 and 1480 by Pope Sixtus IV after whom it is named. The chapel is the location for Papal Conclaves and many important services. -
Jan 1, 1515
Francis I takes power in France.
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Jan 1, 1519
Da Vinci: Mona Lisa
is a portrait by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. It is a painting in oil on a poplar panel, completed circa 1503–1519. It is on permanent display at the Musée du Louvre in Paris. The painting is a half-length portrait and depicts a seated woman, Lisa del Giocondo, whose facial expression has been frequently described as enigmatic. The ambiguity of the subject's expression, the monumentality of the composition, and the subtle modeling of forms and atmospheric illusionism were novel qual -
Jan 1, 1519
Death of Leonardo de Vinci.
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Jan 1, 1558
Elizabeth I succeeds to the throne in England: start of the English “Golden Age”.
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Jan 1, 1564
Death of Michelangelo.
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Tintoretto: Last Supper
Different from usual depictions of the Last Supper, the work does not portray the apostles in the centre of the scene which is instead occupied by secondary characters, such as a woman carrying a dish or the servants taking the dishes from the table. Tintoretto's Last Supper incorporates many Mannerist devices, including an imbalanced composition and visual complexity. The ability of this dramatic scene to engage viewers was well in keeping with Counter-Reformation ideals and the Catholic Church -
Shakespeare: Hamlet.
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Rembrandt: Night Watch
The painting may be more properly titled The Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch. It is on prominent display in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, being the best known painting in their collection. The Night Watch is considered to be one of the most famous paintings in the world. -
Bernini - The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa
The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa is the central sculptural group in white marble set in an elevated aedicule in the Cornaro Chapel, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome. It was designed and completed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the leading sculptor of his day, who also designed the setting of the Chapel in marble, stucco and paint. It is generally considered to be one of the sculptural masterpieces of the High Roman Baroque. -
Fragonard: The Swing
The Swing, also known as The Happy Accidents of the Swing, is an 18th century oil painting by Jean-Honoré Fragonard. It is considered as one of the masterpieces of the rococo era. -
Period: to
American Revolutionary War
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Period: to
The Great French War
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Period: to
French Revolution
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David: The Death of Marat
The Death ofis a 1793 painting in the Neoclassical style by Jacques-Louis David, and is one of the most famous images of the French Revolution. This work depicts the radical journalist Jean-Paul Marat lying dead in his bath on 13 July 1793 after his murder by Charlotte Corday. Corday, who was from a minor aristocratic family, blamed Marat for the September Massacres and feared an all out civil war, claimed "I killed one man to save 100,000." It has been described as the first modernist painting. -
Period: to
Napoleonic Wars
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The Battle of Trafalgar
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Goya: The Third of May 1808
The Third of May 1808 is a painting completed in 1814 by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya, now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. In the work, Goya sought to commemorate Spanish resistance to Napoleon's armies during the occupation of 1808. -
Year Without a Summer:
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November Uprising in Poland against Russia.
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Daguerre: Paris Boulevard
This picture of a boulevard gives the impression of empty streets, because with long exposures moving objects would not register. However, there was an exception when a man stopped to have his shoes shined, (see bottom left of the larger picture) and though he remains anonymous he may have the distinction of being the first person ever to have been photographed. -
The Communist Manifesto published.
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Russia abolishes serfdom.
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Manet: The Luncheon on the Grass
The Luncheon on the Grass is a large oil on canvas painting by Édouard Manet created in 1862 and 1863. The painting depicts the juxtaposition of a female nude and a scantily dressed female bather on a picnic with two fully dressed men in a rural setting. -
France annexes Cambodia.
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Degas: The Ballet Class
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Jack the Ripper murders occur in Whitechapel, London
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Rodin – The Thinker
The Thinker is a bronze and marble sculpture by Auguste Rodin, whose first cast, of 1902, is now in the Musée Rodin in Paris; there are some twenty other original castings as well as various other versions, studies, and posthumous castings. It depicts a man in sober meditation battling with a powerful internal struggle -
Period: to
World War I
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Rodin – The Gates of Hell
The Gates of Hell is a monumental sculptural group work by French artist Auguste Rodin that depicts a scene from "The Inferno", the first section of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. It stands at 6 m high, 4 m wide and 1 m deep (19.69'H × 13.12'W × 3.29'D) and contains 180 figures. The figures range from 15 cm high up to more than one metre. Several of the figures were also cast independently by Rodin. -
Duchamp – Fountain
Fountain is a 1917 work by Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp used a urinal, which he titled Fountain and signed "R. Mutt". It is one of the pieces which he called readymades. In such pieces he made use of an already existing object. Readymades also go by the term Found object. -
1918 flu pandemic
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Brancusi - The Newborn
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Brancusi – Bird in Space
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Monet: Water Lilies
Water Lilies is a series of approximately 250 oil paintings by French Impressionist Claude Monet. The paintings depict Monet's flower garden at Giverny and were the main focus of Monet's artistic production during the last thirty years of his life. Many of the works were painted while Monet suffered from cataracts. -
Moore - Reclining Figure
