Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

From its humble beginnings in 1742 to its closing about 1800, the Roentgen firm pioneered advancements in superb marquetry, innovative designs, visionary production methods, and forward-thinking marketing strategies.

The German expatriate Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) became the most influential teacher of modern art in the United States, and his impact reached both artists and critics.

The Achaemenid Persian empire was the largest that the ancient world had seen, extending from Anatolia and Egypt across western Asia to northern India and Central Asia.

[Labille-Guiard] was versed in a variety of artists’ materials, had exhibited twice at the Salon de la Correspondance, was an experienced teacher of aspiring young women artists, and had cultivated a wide acquaintance among academicians…

Viewed by Academicians and art critics as an artist’s personal reaction to a subject, the sketch was considered to be a sign of genius and originality.

Christianity afforded the possibility of unifying the many diverse ethnic and linguistic peoples of the Aksumite kingdom, a goal of Ezana’s leadership.

In parts of Kongo, Christianity was accepted not as a new religion that would replace the old, but rather as a new syncretic cult that was fully compatible with existing structures.

In the contemporary postcolonial era, the influence of traditional African aesthetics and processes is so profoundly embedded in artistic practice that it is only rarely evoked as such.

Long before Homer, the seafaring civilization of Bronze Age Crete, known today as Minoan, established trade connections with Egypt.

The discovery of vast quantities of West African ivory, called “white gold” in Europe, transformed the nature of African-Portuguese trading in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The fabrication of iron tools and weapons allowed for the kind of extensive systematized agriculture, efficient hunting, and successful warfare necessary to sustain large urban centers.

At the end of Louis’s reign, 101 different craft guilds were established in the city; the university welcomed scholars and students from across Europe.

Under Süleyman, popularly known as “the Magnificent” or “the Lawmaker,” the Ottoman empire reached the apogee of its military and political power.

At its greatest extent, the [Akkadian] empire reached as far as Anatolia in the north, inner Iran in the east, Arabia in the south, and the Mediterranean in the west.

Dürer revolutionized printmaking, elevating it to the level of an independent art form. He expanded its tonal and dramatic range, and provided the imagery with a new conceptual foundation.

Design, not structure or theory, was [Davis’] chief interest and strength. His artistic temperament and eye imbued his work with its special, imaginative quality.

Alfred Stieglitz returned to New York in 1890 determined to prove that photography was a medium as capable of artistic expression as painting or sculpture.

Alfred Stieglitz, photographer, publisher, gallerist, and impresario, made unparalleled contributions to the introduction of modern art in America and gave unequivocal support to young American modernist painters.

Morse enjoyed working in many styles, while constantly adapting her designs both to complement each book’s theme and appeal to the widest audience.

Since Egypt is outside the area where cuneiform writing developed, the Amarna Letters testify to the use of the Mesopotamian script and the Akkadian language across the eastern Mediterranean during this period.

Patrons promoted an American Renaissance to beautify the city with civic monuments, grand mansions, and public sculptures.

By 1850, the prospect of bronze casting in the United States had taken on added symbolism—a medium that reflected America’s growing confidence and ambition as a world power while at the same time proclaiming its artistic independence from European sculptural models and materials.

While the interpretation of American Neoclassicism differed from one Atlantic coast city to the next, it typically drew from common sources.

Furniture in the early Baroque, or William and Mary, style broke away from the solid, horizontal massing and rectilinear outlines of the preceding era.

By the 1780s the sweeping curves of the late Baroque and the exuberant ornament of the Rococo were giving way to a renewed interest in classical precedents, which found expression in the delicate, rectilinear forms of the Neoclassical, or Federal, style.

Georgian design, which was characterized by an adherence to theories of order, symmetry, and proportion drawn from classical models during the Renaissance, represented a significant departure from earlier English decorative traditions.

In 1886, with a series of brilliant images of New York’s new public parks, William Merritt Chase became the first major American painter to create Impressionist canvases in the United States.

Designer sportswear was not usurped from Europe, as “modern art” would later be; it was genuinely invented and developed in America.

These small bits of embroidered cloth are often all that remains to testify to the otherwise unrecorded lives of their makers.

Florence and Rome—with their internationally cosmopolitan environments—were favored by expatriate American sculptors.

Patronage for miniatures extended beyond the court to include the political and merchant elite, eager to own and wear such stunning small portraits of loved ones.

[Miniatures] acquired a high finish and sharp focus, taking on the qualities of their impending rival, the photograph.

Easily portable, and certainly necessary, bedcovers might be some of the few decorative objects a woman had in her home.

Also executed on a domestic scale for private patrons, relief portraits and ideal subjects (drawn from history, mythology, literature, or the Bible) were considered desirable alternatives to the standard in-the-round busts or statues.

Nineteenth-century American architecture and furniture design was characterized by a parade of different styles that purported to take their inspiration from the design vocabulary of the past.

The Rococo crossed the Atlantic via three principal means: engraved designs in printed pattern books, imported objects, and immigrant artisans.

American painters recorded everyday life as it changed around them, capturing the temperament of their respective eras, defining the character of people as individuals, citizens, and members of ever-widening communities.

For the sculptors whose works were displayed outdoors on the fairgrounds as well as in the Fine Arts Building, the World’s Columbian Exposition was a professional and aesthetic coming of age.

In an era when drinking water could be hazardous to one’s health, beer, wine, and spirits were considered safe and even nutritious.

They broke new ground through their independent lifestyles and emphasis on career over marriage and motherhood.

As Henry James remarked in 1887: “It sounds like a paradox, but it is a very simple truth, that when to-day we look for ‘American art’ we find it mainly in Paris.”

Talismans that contain inscriptions with the names of prophets and religious heroes have the power to protect an individual from hardship and danger by acting as a conduit between the two.

Italian Renaissance artists became anatomists by necessity, as they attempted to refine a more lifelike, sculptural portrayal of the human figure.

Many American works of art in jade are green in color with widely varied tonal values.

Many more bronze vessels must have existed in antiquity because they were less expensive than silver and gold, and more have survived because they were buried in tombs or hidden in hoards beneath the ground.

The ancient Greeks were active seafarers seeking opportunities for trade and founding new independent cities at coastal sites across the Mediterranean Sea.

Greek vase painting and traces of paint on ancient sculptures indicate that fabrics were brightly colored and generally decorated with elaborate designs.

Ceramic vessels nourished in both life and death: they held food and drink for daily life, but also offerings in dedicatory caches and burials, which range from the simplest graves to the richest royal tombs.

Maya sculptors celebrated the human form in a naturalistic way, portraying royal individuals as they sit, stand, hold things, and interact with one another.

Finely crafted small openwork bronzes produced in the early second millennium B.C. are among the more enigmatic objects known from the ancient Near East.

Andean weaving was among the arts practiced in colonial Latin America that retained the closest connection to Precolumbian traditions.

Control of the natural world, as expressed by fierce animals, was a key aspect of the iconography of kingship.

In addition to providing intriguing interpretations of animals, bestiaries offered tales about the existence of bizarre and loathsome creatures, many of which appeared in medieval art.

During the 1580s, the Carracci were painting the most radical and innovative pictures in Europe.

The great majority of Kiefer’s works since his emergence in the late 1960s through the 1990s refer to subjects drawn from Germany and its culture.

The Museum of Primitive Art’s focus on works linked to a single cultural or ethnic group was unprecedented, and it created a standard for exhibitions of African art that endured throughout the twentieth century.

While carved gems frequently functioned as signatures and means of identification for their owners, they were also treasured as magical amulets and used as personal ornaments.

Despite his unconventional training, Watteau was permitted to compete for the Prix de Rome at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture.

Antonello da Messina is, in a sense, the first truly European painter and his remarkably varied achievements raise issues crucial to our understanding of European art.

The Antonine Dynasty reflects the connections between wealthy provincial and Italian families.

Antonio Canova is considered the greatest Neoclassical sculptor of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

As diverse as ancient American architectural effigies are, they all speak to an enduring tradition of capturing the essence of key structures and their associated meanings in miniature.

Every piece of a Greek building is integral to its overall structure; a fragment of molding often can be used to reconstruct an entire building.

Architects trained as humanists helped raise the status of their profession from skilled laborer to artist. They hoped to create structures that would appeal to both emotion and reason.

Despite diversity, the persistence of Dutch customs and styles remained strong into the eighteenth century.

The archtop guitar, with its many subtleties of sound, became a dominant instrument in the new bebop and cool jazz styles.

European warriors of the early Middle Ages used both indigenous forms of military equipment and arms and armor derived from late Roman types.

Although arms and armor are most commonly associated with warfare, both were used in other contexts, including hunting, tournaments, and as parade costume.

The field of arms and armor is beset with romantic legends, gory myths, and widely held misconceptions. Most of them are utter nonsense, devoid of any historical base.

In the seventh and sixth centuries B.C., and especially in the first half of the sixth century B.C., Sparta and its region, Laconia, had its own workshops in several genres of artistic craft, such as vase painting, metalwork, ivory and bone carving, and even stone sculpture.

The Virgin’s peaceful falling asleep in death, combined with Christ’s tender embrace of her soul—represented in Byzantine art as a swaddled infant —rendered an ideal image, one in which the Virgin’s soul was conveyed to heaven immediately upon her death.

In keeping with Roman and Jewish practice born of sanitary concerns, the first Christians were buried outside the city, often in subterranean catacombs, into the walls of which gold glass disks were set as memorial markers.

By the second quarter of the eighteenth century, British colonists of all ranks were experiencing a consumer revolution.

The primary functions of the institution of marriage centered on the family and society, and love rarely entered into the equation. Yet the subjects of love, beauty, and attraction mesmerized Renaissance men and women.

As the decade mellowed under the lulling influence of the dot-com boom and the end of the Cold War, the art of the mid-1990s reflected both the newly global situation and the increasingly blurred line between the real and the virtual.

Recently the subject of much critical reappraisal, the art of the 1980s can now be seen in retrospect as a powerful synthesis of the personal and political, as well as an implicit rebuke to the hollow conformity and historical amnesia that characterized the Reagan era.

In addition to portraits, status symbols included sets of silver or porcelain for the service of tea, hot chocolate, and coffee.

Above all, Fulani people are known for their mastery of verbal art expressed in song and poetry.

Because of their sacred function, liturgical objects were often crafted of the most precious materials.

Taking inspiration from the unruly aspects of the natural world, Art Nouveau influenced art and architecture especially in the applied arts, graphic work, and illustration.

Greek artists of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. attained a manner of representation that conveys a vitality of life as well as a sense of permanence, clarity, and harmony.

Under Ottonian rule, churches and monasteries produced magnificent illuminated manuscripts, imposing buildings, and sumptuous luxury objects intended for church interiors and treasuries.

During this period, a distinctive style emerged and new techniques were developed that spread throughout the Muslim realm and greatly influenced Islamic art and architecture.

Although they began by sponsoring austere programs of architectural decoration, their later monuments and textile manufactory in Almería indicate that the Almoravids eventually succumbed to the luxury culture of al-Andalus.

The king himself was perceived as a creative force whose dynamic patronage of the arts, along with his health and appearance, were considered an important metaphor for his kingdom’s strength and stability.

Signatures of artists on refined and prized brass works inlaid with silver seem to indicate that the craftsmen were from Mosul (in present-day Iraq) and had fled from the approaching Mongol armies.

The Mongols clearly brought with them an excitement about the art of painting.

The most lavish medieval books were bound in covers set with enamels, jewels, and ivory carvings.

In Japan’s self-imposed isolation, traditions of the past were revived and refined, and ultimately parodied and transformed in the flourishing urban societies of Kyoto and Edo.

The opulence of the Fatimid court fueled a renaissance in the decorative arts, which made Cairo the most important cultural center in the Islamic world.

The art of the third millennium B.C. reflects not only the extraordinary developments in the cities of the Near Eastern heartland but also their interaction with contemporary civilizations to the east and west.

Hellenistic kings became prominent patrons of the arts, commissioning public works of architecture and sculpture, as well as private luxury items that demonstrated their wealth and taste.

East Asian elements absorbed into the existing Perso-Islamic repertoire created a new artistic vocabulary, one that was emulated from Anatolia to India, profoundly affecting artistic production.

The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries witnessed the revival and reinterpretation of classical traditions alongside significant achievements in innovative art forms.

Within a short period of time, the Mamluks created the greatest Islamic empire of the later Middle Ages, which included control of the holy cities Mecca and Medina.

Jahangir’s claim that he could instantly recognize any painter’s work is a reflection of the rise of the individual artist.

The artists who worked for Akbar, the first great Mughal patron of the arts of the book, included Persians as well as Indian Muslims and Hindus.

Despite its precarious political situation, for over two and a half centuries Granada served as a great cultural center of the Muslim West, attracting leading scholars and literati of the day.

It became more profitable for artists to produce items for the open market than to be tied to the workshops of the low-paying court.

With the conquest of the Mamluk empire in 1517, the Ottomans ruled over the most powerful state in the Islamic world.

For the first time, artists were inspired by and responded to the interests and preferences of the general public.

Art demonstrates both the scope and the limits of Roman influence, for the circulation of materials, methods, objects, and art forms created a certain cultural unity, and yet in each place, the persistence of local customs ensured the survival of cultural diversity.

Artists from the Qara Quyunlu, Aq Quyunlu, and Timurid court studios were brought together and their work helped form a new Safavid style of painting.

Apart from an earlier brief period of Arab rule in the east, Anatolia was new to Islam, and the Seljuqs were thus among the first to cultivate Islamic art and architecture in these lands.

Under the Seljuq sultanate, Iran enjoyed a period of material and cultural prosperity, and the ingenuity in architecture and the arts during this period had a notable impact on later artistic developments.

Neapolitan painting of the early seventeenth century is characterized by dramatic expression, emphatic naturalism, and intense chiaroscuro derived from the profound influence of Caravaggio.

Timurid rulers were sympathetic to Persian culture and lured artists, architects, and men of letters who would contribute to their high court culture.

The Umayyad period is often considered the formative period in Islamic art.

Of works of art and other material culture only coins and scant ceramic fragments remain from this early period of the Umayyad governors (711–56).

As a beehive of building and production, the city provides many insights into ancient industry and technology, from construction, to manufacture of glass and faience, to statuary and textile production, to bread making.

A rigid guild system maintained high standards of craftsmanship and regulated the process of gilt-bronze manufactory.

Dove created a number of inventive works of art that used stylized, abstract forms at a remarkably early date in American art; he is considered the first American artist to have created such purely nonrepresentational imagery.

Almost thirty-three centuries ago, a young man named Khonsu became a “servant in the Place of Truth”—a designation that identified members of the crew of artisans who carved and decorated the royal tombs of the New Kingdom.

During the medieval period, peoples of three faiths—Islam, Christianity, and Judaism—inhabited this land, undertaking sustained and intensive interactions that proved especially fruitful for the visual arts.

The unique combination of national support, local contact between artists, and international curiosity fueled the rapid growth of the saqqakhana movement.

Arts and Crafts designers sought to improve standards of decorative design, believed to have been debased by mechanization, and to create environments in which beautiful and fine workmanship governed.

Semi-nude women, languid youths, and lovers soon came to replace the heroes of the Shahnama and the Khamsa in many an artist’s repertoire.

[Power associations] are dynamic institutions that respond to local contexts and historical change and thus exhibit great variability.

Workshops supported by rulers and members of their extended family produced copies of famous literary works, histories, and Qur’ans.

Only a very few examples of the earliest Christian feather mosaics survive, as the medium is so inherently fragile; only a fraction retain a semblance of their original radiant colors.

The church not only exerted enormous power over the lives of the European and indigenous peoples, but also, through its patronage, profoundly influenced the nature of the visual arts in these regions.

Women who had difficulty conceiving children visited burial grounds and left offerings in the hope that the spirits of the deceased would intercede on their behalf.

Akan textile arts were key markers of status and dominion.

Ignoring or registering only gently harsh new realities such as the problems of immigration and urban poverty, they shone a positive light on their era.

He fashioned progressively vivid compositions typically of woodland interiors, culminating in masterpieces of organic verisimilitude.

The Asmat believe that there is a close relationship between humans and trees, and recognize wood as the source of life.

After several centuries of obscurity and even loss of independence from around 1400 B.C., Assyria’s fortunes revived in the reign of Ashur-uballit I.

The Raymond and Beverly Sackler Assyrian Sculpture Court (Gallery 401) showcases sculptures from the Assyrian capital city of Nimrud (ancient Kalhu) in a space designed to evoke their original palace setting.

While their work was based on ancient sources from Greece, Iran, and India, [scientists in the Islamic world] updated methods for measuring and calculating the movement of heavenly bodies, and continued to develop models of the universe and the movements of the planets within it.

Japan’s first historical epoch–the Asuka period, named for the area near Nara where the court resided–coincides with the introduction of Buddhism into the country.

Their pictorial decorations provide insights into many aspects of Athenian life, and complement the literary texts and inscriptions from the Archaic and, especially, Classical periods.

The victors [of] games brought honor to themselves, their families, and their hometowns.

By 1 A.D., Rome was transformed from a city of modest brick and local stone into a metropolis of marble.

While earlier artists focused on creating an illusion of architectural depth with solid architectural forms, the artists at Boscotrecase presented the idea with whimsical, attenuated, and highly refined elements.

Famed for his sensual nudes and charming scenes of pretty women, Auguste Renoir was a far more complex and thoughtful painter than generally assumed.

The increasingly erotic character of Rodin’s sculpture in the 1880s can be explained by his preoccupation with two highly charged literary sources. These were Dante’s Inferno and Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil.

Saint-Gaudens’ contribution to American Renaissance art and culture must be measured not only as a master sculptor of works large and small, public and private, but also as a gifted teacher, arbiter of taste, and professional role model for a succeeding generation of French-trained American sculptors.

Aztec stone sculpture is the culmination of a long Mesoamerican tradition in the carving of stone—from ordinary volcanic rock to highly prized semi-precious stones such as jade—into objects and monuments of all sorts.

Although [Babylon] was not among the oldest cities in this part of the world, in ancient Mesopotamian mythology it came to be seen as the first city, made at the creation of the world …

Ballet technique, like other classical Baroque figurative arts, favored symmetry, dynamic balance, and the harmony of the entire body.

Traditional Bamana society was a gerontocracy governed by a council of elders, and the tòn enabled young Bamana men to organize themselves into a workforce and represent their interests to their superiors.

Promises of Roman citizenship and military and economic support encouraged barbarian leaders to assist their wealthy neighbor, primarily by providing troops.

They shared a recognition of landscape as an independent subject, a determination to exhibit such paintings at the conservative Salon, and a mutually reinforcing pleasure in nature.

Baroque architects, artists, and urban planners so magnified and invigorated the classical and ecclesiastical traditions of the city that it became for centuries after the acknowledged capital of the European art world.

Dean’s pioneering efforts helped pave the way for this life-saving change in attitudes toward the use of modern body armor.

The most powerful members of a Batak community are ritual specialists, known as datu.

Although today we think of bathing as a private activity, the public bath, or hammam, was a vital social institution in any Middle Eastern city for centuries before the advent of modern plumbing.

The Bauhaus was founded in 1919 in the city of Weimar by German architect Walter Gropius (1883–1969). Its core objective was a radical concept: to reimagine the material world to reflect the unity of all the arts.

Brass commemorative heads are commissioned by each oba (king) in the first years of his reign to honor his immediate predecessor.

Her stated artistic objective, as she told an interviewer in 1925, was to “look for beauty in the every-day world, to catch the joy and swing of modern American life.”

Simply defined, the bikini is an abbreviated two-piece swimsuit with a bra top and panties cut below the navel. Broadly defined, the bikini represents a social leap involving body consciousness, moral concerns, and sexual attitudes.

Andean people attentively observed the natural world, and the various roles attributed to birds in religions and artistic representations often seem to derive from their properties and behaviors in nature.

Many contemporary objects manifest the attendant risks and potential joys of bearing offspring.

Italian piety and Italian art of the late Middle Ages and after tended to stress the Incarnation narrative, the sequence of events surrounding his birth, and the events of the Passion, the sufferings of his final week on earth.

Because it is through writing that the Qur’an is transmitted, the Arabic script was first transformed and beautified in order that it might be worthy of divine revelation.

As with many inventions, it is hard to ascertain what initially inspired goldsmiths to adapt the champlevé technique for printmaking.

At the same time that some sculptors turned outward toward the wider landscape, others turned in upon their own bodies as both the subject and object of sculptural activity.

From the fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth century, more books of hours were made than any other type of book.

The fact that the mid-first-century B.C. decoration was not replaced by another, more contemporary, decoration in the first century A.D. is a clear indication that there was already an awareness of the quality of the frescoes in antiquity.

The use of botanical imagery in painting proliferated especially in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as artists became increasingly interested in the realistic depiction of objects from the natural world.

Many European cities had bronze foundries, but Florence saw the first true flowering of bronze sculpture.

By the late nineteenth century, the concept of “the vanishing West” drove many sculptors to record their perceptions of western life.

The Gupta period, from the fourth to the sixth century A.D., in northern India, sometimes referred to as a Golden Age, witnessed the creation of an “ideal image” of the Buddha.

There are, to this date, architectural elements at The Cloisters whose original location remains unknown.

Already one of Europe’s richest centers of cloth production and an important trade hub, the Netherlands under Burgundian rule attracted and inspired some of the most talented artists of the Renaissance period.

Though the Burgundian court was the single most important artistic patron during the period, private citizens were no less interested in using art to express their spiritual concerns and personal ambitions.

Mirroring the political climate, art became a medium of confrontation and cooperation between the two sides.

The allure of this substance is easily understood: its smooth, tactile quality and creamy color made it ideal for the creation of luxury goods.

Justinian drew upon administrators and counselors from outside the aristocratic class. His own modest origins, along with his selection of these court members, contributed to lasting tensions with the Byzantine nobility.

The emperor renamed this ancient port city Constantinople (“the city of Constantine”) in his own honor.

Objects from different periods and regions vary in the use of calligraphy in their overall design, demonstrating the creative possibilities of calligraphy as ornament.

Cameos were, and still are, especially prized when the artist manipulated the strata of the stone in relation to the design, exploring the stone’s depths to enhance its visual impact.

Wheeler’s weapons in her struggle to make a difference were artistic talent and a strong social conscience.

The ceremony of capac hucha, or “royal obligation” in Quechua, reportedly occurred to mark natural events like a drought or the accession or death of an Inca ruler.

Caravaggio pushed the figures up against the picture plane and used light to enhance the dramatic impact and give the figures a quality of immediacy.

Embracing both human enterprise and the natural wonders of California, Watkins created crystalline views of the West that balanced the works of man and nature in an ideal harmony we can only envy today.

“Throughout his whole reign, the wish that he had nearest to heart was to re-establish the ancient authority of the city of Rome under his care and by his influence” (Life of Charlemagne 27).

[Carpets] were traded to Europe and the Far East where, too precious to be placed on the ground, they were used to cover furniture or hung on walls. Within the Islamic world, especially fine specimens were collected in royal households.

Preserved in the [Kawawari] caves for generations, some of the carvings are between 200 and 400 years old, making them the oldest surviving examples of wood sculpture from New Guinea.

Having closely observed the locomotion of animals, [Palissy] transformed the slithering or coiling of snakes into motifs that invigorated his clay compositions.

The richness and fame of the Cesnola Collection also did much to establish the Museum’s reputation as a major repository of classical antiquities and put it on a par with the foremost museums in Europe, whose collections had largely been formed at an earlier date.

From their architecture, furniture, and textile designs to their photography and corporate design, the husband-and-wife team exerted a profound influence on the visual character of daily life in America, whether at work or at home.

With his talent for design and promotion, Charles Frederick Worth built his design house into a huge business during the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

Never having had formal dressmaking training, [Charles James] developed his own methodology based on mathematical, architectural, and sculptural concepts as they relate to the human body.

The sharpness and clarity of [Sheeler’s] vision associated him with the group of artists working in a style termed Precisionist.

The man who will go down to posterity is the man who paints his own time and the scenes of every-day life around him.

Works with powerful physiques and thin clothing derive from Indian prototypes, while sculptures that feature thin bodies with thick clothing evince a Chinese idiom.

Calligraphy, or the art of writing, was the visual art form prized above all others in traditional China.

Cloisonné objects were intended primarily for the furnishing of temples and palaces, because their flamboyant splendor was considered appropriate to the function of these structures.

One of the most important considerations in garden design is the harmonious arrangement of elements expressing different aspects of yin and yang.

Looking at a handscroll that one has seen before is like visiting an old friend whom one has not seen for a while.

With exceptional artistic sensibility and intimate knowledge of the material, [a master craftsman] is able to visualize the completed product in an unworked rock.

Integrating calligraphy, poetry, and painting, scholar-artists for the first time combined the “three perfections” in a single work.

In the absence of any surviving clothing, art and literature provide the only evidence of classical dress, opening a Pandora’s box of confusion and contradiction.

Developed in the early sixteenth century and especially popular among Venetian women, the high-platformed shoe called the chopine had both a practical and symbolic function.

After years of military and civilian uniforms, sartorial restrictions and shortages, Dior offered not merely a new look but a new outlook.

[Dresser] believed that truth was founded in science and that art reflected beauty.

Even in a ruined state, the baths, aqueducts, and sanctuaries of the classical world provoked the people of the Middle Ages to reflect upon the grandeur of the past.

In depicting details of the distinctive modes of ancient Greek attire, subsequent artists and designers have changed, as much as preserved, the actual qualities of ancient garb.

Greek artists and intellectuals were welcomed in Cyprus, although there was always more incentive for Cypriot sculptors, philosophers, and writers to move from Cyprus to the Greek mainland.

Although components of Hellenic attire have appeared throughout Western fashion’s 600-year history, it is only from the 1790s to the 1810s that classicized forms are embraced as the prevailing mode.

Claude drew inspiration from his close, constant study of nature and changing effects of light.

Monet found subjects in his immediate surroundings, as he painted the people and places he knew best.

Celebrated by some, deplored by others, these stimulating brews gave rise to a number of important social institutions, such as the coffeehouse, the tea garden, and the ritual of afternoon tea.

A compilation of remarkable things was attempted as a mirror of contemporary knowledge, regardless of whether those objects were created by the genius of man or the caprice of nature.

The religious elements involved in their design and use had made kero cups frequent targets of early Spanish drives to destroy “pagan” rites.

Because the mask partially or entirely obscured facial expression, emphasis was placed on dialect and exaggerated gesture to convey emotion and intention.

[Marco] Polo is simply the most famous of the thousands of Venetian merchants who sought to make a fortune by acquiring luxury goods, spices, and raw materials in the East and selling them for a high return on Venetian markets.

While in the early phases of this school artists depended on a few key patrons, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, enterprising Indian artists had begun to create sets of standard popular subjects that could be sold to any tourist passing through the major attractions.

In the wake of Abstract Expressionism, a number of painters developed strategies that both extended the life of painting while simultaneously pointing to its inevitable demise.

Constantinople was one of the first cities to lose many of its citizens to the Black Death in 1347.

The richness and variety of the costumes represented in ancient Greek art are often the result of simple manipulations of the three basic garment types: the chiton, the peplos, and the himation.

Few statues from antiquity have survived both in situ and intact, but the evidence suggests an ever-changing and expanding range of contexts for their display.

For the devout, the veneration of these five [celestial] Buddhas offered a direct path to breaking free of the cycle of rebirth, a goal facilitated by their innumerable manifestations that make up the Himalayan Buddhist pantheon.

The Costume Institute houses a collection of more than 35,000 costumes and accessories spanning five continents and just as many centuries, arguably the greatest such collection in the world.

Fascinated by her own beauty, the countess would attempt to capture all its facets and re-create for the camera the defining moments of her life.

Members of the Ilkhanid court wore expensive clothes and accessories, whether they were traveling in luxurious tents or settling in one of their palaces for a while.

The physical embodiment of desire, these objects often display literary or symbolic representations of the pursuit or attainment of the lover.

Balenciaga achieved what is considered to be his most important contribution to the world of fashion: a new silhouette for women.

Although Adam had only recently established his practice in London, his new Neoclassical style found a ready and eager audience with the nobility and gentry.

Formidable traditions governed the representation of the Crucifixion and other Passion scenes, and yet Italian painters continually renewed them through creative engagement with established conventions.

The Crusaders then took over many of the cities on the Mediterranean coast and built a large number of fortified castles all over the Holy Land to protect their new territories.

Ctesiphon’s strategic location as well as its political importance made the city an international trading and market center with a diverse population.

The Cubist painters rejected the inherited concept that art should copy nature, or that they should adopt the traditional techniques of perspective, modeling, and foreshortening.

Theologians established a parallel between Christ’s Passion and the Virgin’s compassion: while he suffered physically on the cross, she was crucified in spirit.

From Egypt to Iran, Islamic cut and engraved decoration took various forms, ranging from complex relief patterns created using mechanically operated wheels and drills to hair-width incisions made with a pointed tool.

Cypriot smiths produced some of the finest bronzework in the eastern Mediterranean, most notably tripods and four-sided stands.

From the moment of its birth, photography had a dual character—as a medium of artistic expression and as a powerful scientific tool—and Daguerre promoted his invention on both fronts.

While portraiture was by far the most common subject of daguerreotypes, artists and scientists, explorers and archaeologists all took up the camera and produced pictures unlike any that had been made before.

The daguerreotype process, employing a polished silver-plated sheet of copper, was the dominant form of photography for the first twenty years of picture making in the United States.

Although most of the woodwork elements date to the early eighteenth century, some elements reflect changes over time in its original historical context, as well as adaptations to its museum setting.

Daniel Chester French attained prominence as the leading American monumental sculptor of the early twentieth century.

Over time, Daoism developed into an organized religion—largely in response to the institutional structure of Buddhism—with an ever-growing canon of texts and pantheon of gods, and a significant number of schools with often distinctly different ideas and approaches.

In the mid-1840s, the Scottish painter-photographer team of Hill and Adamson produced the first substantial body of self-consciously artistic work using the newly invented medium of photography.

The Greeks believed that at the moment of death the psyche, or spirit of the dead, left the body as a little breath or puff of wind. The deceased was then prepared for burial according to time-honored rituals.

It was the use and function of the individual weapon or armor that determined why, how, and to what extent an object was decorated.

As part of Europe’s first standing army, the soldiers of the Roman Republic and empire were equipped with plain and serviceable armor of bronze or iron, and shields often painted with devices signifying the unit to which the soldier belonged.

The degree of ornamentation and the range of symbols found on Tibetan arms and armor can vary considerably, but generally the same decorative motifs found on other Tibetan objects and works of art, such as furniture, ritual implements, sculpture, and paintings, are seen on arms and armor.

Design reformers attempted to help a new and rapidly growing generation of middle-class homemakers create artistic yet healthy homes.

By the turn of the twentieth century, a new stylistic vocabulary—with distinct regional characteristics—had been firmly established. Whether realistic or abstract, exuberant or restrained, curvilinear or geometric, there was a consistency in the purposeful rejection of outmoded tastes and exploration of new design influences.

Inspired in part by pre-war European efforts to democratize design through industrial production, [the Good Design] movement energetically promoted modern design to the American consumer through museum exhibitions, trade shows, and advertising.

New materials and technologies, many of which had been developed during wartime, helped to free design from tradition, allowing for increasingly abstract and sculptural aesthetics as well as lower prices for mass-produced objects.

The last quarter of the twentieth century saw a surge of unbridled consumerism manifested in a number of diverse, often contradictory, design currents.

A full family of recorders was needed for playing the notated polyphonic repertory of the period—motets, secular songs, fantasias, canzonas, and arrangements of dances—music made commonly available in the sixteenth century by the invention of music printing in 1501.

No later than the last quarter of the fifteenth century, Italian sculptors began to use methods to cast bronzes without destroying their original model.

Diviners invest in the arts to foster personal relationships with the spirit world and enhance communication between nature spirits and humans.

Domenichino fully subscribed to the classical notion that painting was like silent poetry and required a stylized expressive vocabulary to be properly understood and deciphered.

The manufacture of secular art objects, usually for the purpose of commemoration, personalized these lavish Italian Renaissance interiors.

Dona Beatriz claimed to be possessed by the spirit of Saint Anthony, who addressed the kingdom’s problems through her.

The powerful expressivity of his art made him the greatest sculptor of the early Renaissance.

The study of medieval drawings requires that we both expand and rethink our notion of what a drawing is and how it might be used.

The Museum of Costume Art established a pattern of collecting that continues to inform The Costume Institute’s acquisitions program to this day.

Christian Dior was the first to name the early evening frock a “cocktail” dress in the late 1940s, and in doing so allowed magazines, department stores, and rival Parisian and American designers to promote fashion with cocktail-specific terminology.

Subtly or clearly expressed in art, opposite doubles and mirror images reflect the ancient heritage of symbolic dualism in the ideologies, world visions, and social structures of Andean people.

In addition to standing among the most prominent craftsmen of their era, Phyfe and Lannuier have become two of the most recognized names in the field of American decorative art scholarship.

Rome’s principal attractions were its classical ruins, works by contemporary masters like Raphael and Michelangelo, and patronage from local aristocracy and the Roman Catholic Church.

Today, the eagle remains one of the most prevalent symbols of the nation.

Early Cycladic sculpture comprises predominantly female figures that range from simple modification of the stone to developed representations of the human form, some with natural proportions and some more idealized.

Photographers used its growing influence to expose society’s evils, which the prosperous, self-indulgent Belle Époque chose to ignore: the degrading conditions of workers in big-city slums, the barbarism of child labor, the terrorism of lynching, the devastation of war.

These [Early Dynastic] statues embodied the very essence of the worshipper so that the spirit would be present when the physical body was not.

African patrons and entrepreneurs quickly picked up the new technology, which circulated and flourished through local and global networks of exchange. Photographers, clients, and images moved across the region often traversing both national and ethnic boundaries.

Whether they were made as objects for veneration, as records of human existence in a certain time and place, or as adornments for private dwellings or public sites, early Netherlandish paintings reveal the pursuit of a common goal—to make the painted image vividly present and to render the unseen palpable.

While early single-volume Qur’ans were often large and even monumental for use in recitations, others were miniature in scale and may have been used as talismans.

The porcelains were often stored at the lowest level of the ships, both to provide ballast and because they were impervious to water.

The strong religious associations of tiger and dragon motifs contributed to their popularity in the fine and decorative arts throughout China, Japan, and Korea.

The most recognizable art forms from Easter Island are its colossal stone figures, or moai, images of ancestral chiefs whose supernatural power protected the community.

The Roman pantheon presented a wide range of cults and gods with different functions, but foreign cults promised something different, something the traditional Roman cults could not-change, both in everyday life and even, at times, in the afterlife.

His sculpture remained a private medium, akin to sketches or drawings, in which Degas, limiting himself to a small range of subjects, explored the problems that fascinated him.

Unusual vantage points and asymmetrical framing are a consistent theme throughout Degas’s works.

The porcelain the Dutch brought to Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was some of the first Japanese art to which Europeans were exposed.

In ten years, Baldus established the model for photographic representation in genres that barely existed before him.

Despite his efforts, Manet’s modern scenes remained a target of criticism.

Hopper sought and explored his chosen themes: the tensions between individuals (particularly men and women), the conflict between tradition and progress in both rural and urban settings, and the moods evoked by various times of day.

Steichen’s embrace of editorial and commercial photography in his own work—to Stieglitz’s mind, nothing less than apostasy—drove a still greater wedge between the former mentor and protégé.

Lycett’s artistic talent and entrepreneurial skill fueled the dramatic upward trajectory of his success and distinguish his story from those of many industrious immigrants to the land of opportunity.

During the Late Period, the reemergence of a centralized royal tradition that interacted with the relatively decentralized network inherited from the Third Intermediate Period created a rich artistic atmosphere.

The Middle Kingdom (mid-Dynasty 11–Dynasty 13, ca. 2030–1640 B.C.) began when Nebhepetre Mentuhotep II reunited Upper and Lower Egypt, setting the stage for a second great flowering of Egyptian culture.

The pharaohs built their mortuary temples [in Thebes] and were buried in huge rock-cut tombs decorated with finely executed paintings or painted reliefs illustrating religious texts concerned with the afterlife.

Although much of their artistic effort was centered on preserving life after death, Egyptians also surrounded themselves with beautiful objects to enhance their lives in this world.

Examining Egyptian art during these 300 years reveals strong continuities in its traditions but also interactions with Greek art, whose forms and styles swept the world with Alexander’s armies.

Relatively little building took place during the Third Intermediate Period, but the creation of stylistically and technologically innovative bronze and precious temple statuary of gods, kings, and great temple officials flourished.

In ancient Egypt, amulets might be carried, used in necklaces, bracelets, or rings, and—especially—placed among a mummy’s bandages to ensure the deceased a safe, healthy, and productive afterlife.

The first generation of modern Egyptian artists was driven by a renewed appreciation of their national patrimony and the return to ancient pharaonic art detached from any African, Arab, or religious cultural references.

Alfred Lucas, one of the foremost early researchers in the study of ancient Egyptian technology, correctly surmised that the vast majority of such colorations resulted from fortuitous tarnishing of silver-bearing gold and also recognized correctly that a smaller group of objects bearing a distinctly different red coloration represented another phenomenon altogether.

The vocabulary of ancient Egyptian art would be interpreted and adapted in different ways depending on the standards and motivations of the time.

Tombs provide us with invaluable information about the lives of the ancient Egyptians.

Dress of the eighteenth century is not without anachronisms and exoticisms of its own, but that singular, changing, revolutionizing century has become an icon in the history of fashion.

By the eighteenth century, color, not line, became dominant as pastels moved aesthetically closer to painting.

Although the iconic silhouette of the eighteenth century is that of the rectangularly panniered, conically corseted court dress, a simpler line of dress launched the era.

Although many critics applauded their new prominence, others lamented the immodesty of women who would display their skills so publicly.

No other great Western artist moved mentally—as El Greco did—from the flat symbolic world of Byzantine icons to the world-embracing, humanistic vision of Renaissance painting, and then on to a predominantly conceptual kind of art.

[Vigée Le Brun] contributed more than fifty pictures [to the Salon] and had reached the high point of her career when, after the march on Versailles, she fled the French Revolution.

Elizabeth I’s admiration for the arts, along with England’s economic buoyancy during her reign, provided ripe conditions for the production of enduring hallmarks in the visual, decorative, and performing arts.

While her contemporaries Gabrielle Chanel and Madeleine Vionnet set the period’s standards of taste and beauty in fashion design, Schiaparelli flouted convention in the pursuit of a more idiosyncratic style.

Revolutionary conquests were echoed in the fine and decorative arts, in which figures of Fame and Victory abounded.

Strategically located between southern gold-producing regions and Saharan salt mines like Taghaza, the kingdoms of the western Sudan were well positioned to amass great wealth through the taxation of imports and exports.

The numerous enameled and gilded objects that have survived intact demonstrate that such vessels were highly prized and probably used for special occasions.

While this skill is traditionally associated with femininity and the education of young girls, it was in fact practiced by both men and women, children and adults, paid professionals and talented amateurs.

The books ran the gamut from princely folio size to pocket handbook, but most were modest volumes intended to guide tradesmen in constructing fashionable furniture.

From James I to George III, silver styles reflected the policies and aesthetic preferences of the sovereign.

Painters and their works were integral to Hemingway’s learning to see, to hear, and to feel or not feel.

Along with his studies at the Islamic city of Samarra, [Herzfeld’s] research at Persepolis is the best known work of his career.

Herzfeld’s work at Samarra effectively established the field of Islamic archaeology and played a seminal role in expanding the field of Islamic studies and art history generally.

Etching offered students the ability to replicate their own paintings and thus build, from afar, their reputations at home.

The etching revival inspired an interest in the medium that was sustained throughout the rest of the nineteenth century in France.

The most impressive surviving evidence of Ethiopia’s artistic past is its stone monuments.

Images on scrolls are nonrepresentational talismanic designs that reveal mysteries and enhance the effectiveness of written prayers.

While some 13,000 Etruscan texts exist, most of these are very short. Consequently, much of what we know about the Etruscans comes not from historical evidence, but from their art and the archaeological record.

We have no surviving histories or literature in Etruscan, and the only extant writing that can be considered a text, as opposed to an inscription, was painted in ink on linen, preserved through the fortuitous reuse of the linen as wrappings for an Egyptian mummy.

[Atget] became obsessed with making what he modestly called “documents” of the city and its environs, and compiling a visual compendium of the architecture, landscape, and artifacts that distinguish French culture and its history.

In addition to the discovery and colonization of far off lands, these years were filled with pronounced advancements in cartography and navigational instruments, along with other advances in the study of anatomy and optics.

As the Europeans were introduced to many new kinds of textiles, carpets, spices, and clothing, so too was the Islamic world enriched.

The adoption of the pendulum in the seventeenth century radically changed the European clock.

The nineteenth century was marked by an array of revival styles ranging from the classicism of Greece and Rome to the Renaissance and the later Rococo and Neoclassical styles.

The process of tapestry weaving, where every stitch is placed by hand, enabled the creation of complex figurative images on an enormous scale.

Lacking the traditions of commercial production and established markets that supported the continued growth and vitality of the Netherlandish and French industries, manufactories like the Medici, Mortlake, and Barberini workshops were dependent on the fortune of their founding patrons.

Royal pendants and masquettes, openwork bracelets, and altar sculpture are some of the art forms that found broad dissemination and usage within this region.

Like Orientalist subjects in nineteenth-century painting, exoticism in the decorative arts and interior decoration was associated with fantasies of opulence and “barbaric splendour.”

The organic shapes, in particular, suggest that anatomical study and dissection played a significant part in the development of the characteristic idiom of the Auricular Style.

Undoubtedly, the viewer’s first response upon opening the prayer beads and miniature altarpieces must have been a sense of wonder, soon followed by a keen desire to understand how and by whom these extraordinary and delightful objects were made.

The image of the head or face can have the capacity to instruct, but in certain forms it can possess a special power to protect, to heal, or even do harm.

Critical factors in the establishment and success of any such center were proximity to water (which would provide energy as well as transport routes) and the availability of metal either from nearby natural supplies or through trade.

Armor was subject not only to technical advances but also to changes in taste as well as aesthetic and artistic expression within each period of its development.

The equipment and appearance of twelfth- and early thirteenth-century knights and men-at-arms from England would have differed little from those of their French, German, or Italian counterparts.

In terms of the technical development of European armor, the fourteenth century is often referred to as the “age of experimentation.”

It is during the fifteenth century that certain characteristics in form, construction, and decoration can be seen, which are typical for different regions of Europe.

From the beginning of the sixteenth century onward, and at first in addition to the decorative ridges and grooves, armor began to be adorned more and more frequently with etched decoration.

The growing demand to fit out large standing armies with armor at low cost (and, consequently, low quality) drastically curbed the influence fashion had on armor.

Safavid dress is characterized by innovative color combinations, distinctive figural motifs on fabrics, and rich texture due to the extensive use of gold- and silver-wrapped threads. The resulting overall ensemble of garments created an opulent and elegant look for both men and women.

The Fauve painters were the first to break with Impressionism as well as with older, traditional methods of perception.

Despite the knights’ gradual loss of military importance, the system by which noble families were identified, called heraldry, continued to flourish and became more complex.

As with other forms of Islamic ornamentation, artists freely adapted and stylized basic human and animal forms, giving rise to a great variety of figural-based designs.

Filippino’s style as a painter and draftsman was marked by animated form and line, as well as a rather warm colorism.

The gilt surface must be polished and burnished, but when complete it is bright and lustrous, a fitting decoration for masterwork arms and armor.

South Italian wares, unlike Attic, were not widely exported and seem to have been intended solely for local consumption.

[The Flavians] restored stability to Rome following the reign of Nero (r. 54–68 A.D.) and the civil wars that had wreaked havoc on the empire, and particularly on Italy itself.

Under the influence of Joannes and Andreas Ruckers I, in the seventeenth century Antwerp reached its peak of production and began producing more uniform instruments.

The Shahnama, with its rich detailing of the largely lost material culture of the Mongol court, presents a view of the contemporary Ilkhanid world, transforming a popular text into a splendid visual document of the period.

A revealing sensuousness in the nude figure, largely absent in French art before this time, evolved at Fontainebleau.

In the fifteenth century, artists took increasing inspiration from the culture of antiquity and from the natural world, and began to depict objects such as fruits, sweets, and wine vessels, as well as flora and fauna, in both devotional and secular images.

His life and work have been celebrated for centuries, yet only recently has Fra Angelico’s fundamental importance in the development of European painting been fully appreciated.

Over the course of his long career, Goya moved from jolly and lighthearted to deeply pessimistic and searching in his paintings, drawings, etchings, and frescoes.

Boucher’s most original contribution to Rococo painting was his reinvention of the pastoral, a form of idealized landscape populated by shepherds and shepherdesses in silk dress, enacting scenes of erotic and sentimental love.

His abiding feeling for the land and his belief in man’s need for a direct relationship with nature were essential to his concept of an “organic architecture.”

Hals’ portraits suggest friendliness, preoccupation, or reserve, without giving away much about the person.

Though Church had rarely shared his teacher’s taste for explicit moral and religious allegory in landscape art, he often disclosed both his patriotism and his piety.

As Theodore Roosevelt observed of Remington […]: “He is, of course, one of the most typical American artists we have ever had, and he has portrayed a most characteristic and yet vanishing type of American life.”

Although most of MacMonnies’ works were conceived to be cast in bronze, the artist employed various media to achieve his creative goals.

The classical ideal propagated at the Academy was complemented by the influence of contemporary art in Rome and the city’s thriving artistic community.

During the Art Deco period there was a fairly wide acceptance by the consumer public of many of the ideas put forth by avant-garde painters and sculptors, especially as they were adapted by designers and applied to fashionable luxury objects that encapsulated the sophisticated tastes of the times.

Considered the father of French art pottery, Ernest Chaplet (1835–1909) played an influential role in nearly all genres of the movement.

In the still small but gay and colorful pavilion devised by Le Vau, now his favorite architect, the young sovereign surrounded himself with sensuous Italian or Flemish cabinets.

Faience, or tin-glazed and enameled earthenware, first emerged in France during the sixteenth century, reaching widespread usage among elite patrons during the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, prior to the establishment of soft-paste porcelain factories.

One of the most gifted and successful cabinetmakers of the second half of the eighteenth century, Riesener was the favorite of Queen Marie Antoinette.

Since only the menuisier was obliged to sign his work, the names of the other craftsmen are, unfortunately, rarely known.

The soft-paste porcelain factory founded at Vincennes in about 1740 was to dominate not only the French ceramic industry, but also the entirety of European ceramics for the second half of the eighteenth century.

Silver has always held an exalted position within the decorative arts.

This growing vogue for the Orient resulted in the chinoiserie garden style, usually expressed by adding Chinese structures to the garden.

From Austria in the South, to Sweden and Russia in the North, French gardens became the model for garden design.

Throughout the ages, public sculptures have served as didactic tools, offering moral, patriotic, and cultural instruction. Symbols of pride, they have proclaimed cities as tastemakers in civic and aesthetic matters.

Scholars specializing in Fulani culture believe that some of the imagery depicts rituals that are still practiced by contemporary Fulani people.

All armor, whether used in warfare, tournaments, or parades, once had a “working lifetime.” Often these objects have been subjected, literally, to extreme “wear and tear.” Therefore, no matter how well armor may be displayed in museums today, its original use and function can be difficult to convey.

Liquid libations offered to the dead were poured through the containers into the soil containing the deceased’s remains.

The king favored carved and gilded wood furniture and commissioned a broad range of objects in solid silver that included tall candlestands, massive tables, benches and stools, chandeliers, and mirror frames.

Chanel succeeded in packaging and marketing her own personal attitudes and style, making her a key arbiter of women’s taste throughout the twentieth century.

Synthesis of foreign styles with Indian forms is typical of the multi-ethnic character of Gandharan taste.

Gardens played many roles in French society—and thus found increasing representations in art—as places for relaxation, for music and dance, for poetry and learning, for horticulture, as symbolic spaces for myth and allegory, and finally as decorative motifs.

Seventeenth-century explorations of the world seas and subsequent advances in natural history and botanical sciences directly affected the appearance of gardens.

A large facet of a genre scene’s appeal was the opportunity it afforded to gaze into a private interior and to identify with the values expressed by the subject.

Geometric abstraction, through the Cubist process of purifying art of the vestiges of visual reality, focused on the inherent two-dimensional features of painting.

The most important development on Cyprus between about 1200 and 1050 B.C. was the arrival of successive waves of immigrants from the Greek mainland. These newcomers brought with them, and perpetuated, Mycenaean customs of burial, dress, pottery, production, and warfare.

Geometric Greece experienced a cultural revival of its historical past through epic poetry and the visual arts.

These abstract designs not only adorn the surfaces of monumental Islamic architecture but also function as the major decorative element on a vast array of objects of all types.

Inness distinguished himself from the Hudson River School in the profound degree to which philosophical and spiritual ideas inspired his work. Ultimately, he became the leading American artist-philosopher of his generation.

Over the course of the nineteenth century, American and European popular culture elaborated on Washington’s iconic persona and adapted it to patriotic and sentimental purposes.

Artists of the Neo-Impressionist circle renounced the random spontaneity of Impressionism in favor of a measured painting technique grounded in science and the study of optics.

With exceptionally keen powers of observation and great finesse with a paintbrush, [Georgia O’Keeffe] recorded subtle nuances of color, shape, and light that enlivened her paintings and attracted a wide audience.

David worked in a progressive, even enterprising, mode, casting off his late medieval heritage and proceeding with a certain purity of vision in an age of transition.

In 1709 an alchemist named Johann Friedrich Böttger discovered the materials required to produce a white, translucent, high-fired porcelain body, and this discovery was to have profound consequences for the entire European ceramic industry.

Forging a path for future artists, [Bernini] played an instrumental role in establishing the dramatic and eloquent vocabulary of the Baroque style.

[Stuart] knew well the conventions of portraiture, easily rendered the attributes of gentility and affluence, and succeeded time and again in executing portraits that fulfilled in pictorial terms the wishes and desires of his sitters.

One of the greatest printmakers of the eighteenth century, Piranesi always considered himself an architect.

In [Tiepolo’s] hands, the informal oil sketch was raised to a primary art form, worthy to be collected alongside his finished paintings.

In the field of Islamic art, glass is a craft that often rose to excellence but has been largely overlooked by art historians.

Combined with other sumptuous materials such as wood, marble, and other decorative stones, these glass ornaments transformed the interiors of churches, mosques, palaces, and shrines.

Since their introduction by the Romans in the early first century A.D., molds have been used continuously and remain one of the most common tools of the glassmaker.

Although gold as a commodity appears to have been largely controlled by the king, Egyptians of less than royal status also owned gold jewelry.

Cast gold ornaments exhibiting imagery of political and martial supremacy dangled from sword hilts and scabbards enhanced the prestige of those who wore them.

During the earliest years of European expansion onto the American continents, the search for gold was one of the driving factors in the exploration and colonization of the vast lands.

French furniture of this period was the collaborative effort of various artists and craftsmen who worked according to strictly enforced guild regulations.

Todini is best known for constructing the complex musical mechanisms that he displayed in his Galleria Armonica e Matematica in Rome, one of the first museums of musical instruments.

From the time of their construction, these tombs have stood as symbols of political authority and cultural grandeur.

The term celadon is thought to derive from the name of the hero in a seventeenth-century French pastoral comedy.

With growing assurance, architects in northern France, and soon all over Europe, competed in a race to conquer height.

The Grand Tour gave concrete form to Northern Europeans’ ideas about the Greco-Roman world and helped foster Neoclassical ideals.

Among the most prolific and creative printmakers of his era, the German artist Max Klinger (1857–1920) revived printmaking in his native country at a time when it struggled to overcome industrial connotations.

While other instruments, such as whistles and rattles, can be used to augment the music of the Great Plains, the drum most often accompanies the human voice.

As the largest city in western Asia or Europe, Istanbul was the natural center of this commerce.

Greek artists rapidly assimilated foreign styles and motifs into new portrayals of their own myths and customs, thereby forging the foundations of Archaic and Classical Greek art.

Ancient Greek religious practice, essentially conservative in nature, was based on time-honored observances, many rooted in the Bronze Age (3000–1050 B.C.), or even earlier.

Of all the Greek vase shapes, the hydria probably received the most artistically significant treatment in terracotta and in bronze.

Over time, reductive simplicity emerged as a way of conveying an aura of the antique, a strategy that was further developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The vast majority of [the figurines with articulated limbs] have suspension holes on top of their heads; the dangling arms and legs were in motion when the figurines were shaken or hung.

The name [“f/64”] referred to the smallest aperture available in large-format view cameras at the time and it signaled the group’s conviction that photographs should celebrate rather than disguise the medium’s unrivaled capacity to present the world “as it is.”

The vihuela and guitar existed simultaneously until the seventeenth century, when the popularity of the guitar superseded the vihuela.

Through his powerful realism, Courbet became a pioneering figure in the history of modernism.

In the 1852 edition of his treatise, Le Gray wrote: “It is my deepest wish that photography, instead of falling within the domain of industry, of commerce, will be included among the arts.”

This central dome was often interpreted by contemporary commentators as the dome of heaven itself.

The Halaf potters used different sources of clay from their neighbors and achieved outstanding elaboration and elegance of design with their superior quality ware.

China was reunited under the rule of the Han dynasty.

The remains discovered at Hasanlu demonstrate that it was a major local center of commerce and artistic production with close ties to other political and creative centers of the Near East during the early first millennium B.C.

Couture has long stood as the modern equilibrium between the garment as exquisite aggregate and the burgeoning notions of fashion as a system.

Fujiwara courtiers encouraged an aura of courtly sophistication and sensitivity in all of their activities, including the visual and literary arts, and even religious practice.

The wealth of its natural resources and its strategic position on the principal maritime route linking Greece and the Aegean with the Levant and Egypt made Cyprus a major prize for the warring Hellenistic rulers.

A wide variety of jewelry types were produced in the Hellenistic period-earrings, necklaces, pendants, pins, bracelets, armbands, thigh bands, finger rings, wreaths, diadems, and other elaborate hair ornaments.

One of the most important engravers and print publishers of his time, [Hendrick Goltzius] is most widely known today for the Mannerist engravings that he and his workshop produced during the period between 1585 and 1589.

To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which gave that event its proper expression.

An aristocratic, alcoholic dwarf known for his louche lifestyle, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec created art that was inseparable from his legendary life.

Initially trained as a lawyer, Matisse developed an interest in art only at age twenty-one.

Together [Brown and Ward] redefined American sculpture in their choice of aesthetics, subjects, and materials.

Just as the emperor Augustus had claimed descent from Aeneas, a son of Venus, so many Italian princes traced their ancestry to the participants in the Trojan War or sought to equate their own accomplishments with the deeds of these heroes.

Although a Hindu temple is dedicated to the glory of a deity and is aimed at helping the devotee toward moksha, its walls might justifiably contain sculptures that reflect the other three goals of life.

Many different types of hippopotamus representations occurred throughout ancient Egypt, but the most famous are doubtless the wonderful faience hippopotami . . .

Among the most influential and best-known American sculptors of the nineteenth century, Hiram Powers enjoyed international recognition for marbles executed in the prevailing Neoclassical style.

The reasons for the rapid disappearance of the Hittites, who had dominated Anatolia for centuries, remain unexplained.

From the time of Otto’s coronation until the official dissolution of the empire in 1806, the imperial title was held almost exclusively by German monarchs and, for nearly four centuries, by members of a single family.

Mankind has used animals such as onagers (wild donkeys), horses, camels, elephants, and dogs in conflicts for thousands of years, but no other animal has been employed so widely and continuously and was at times so comprehensively protected as the horse.

The objects produced in the hot-worked technique range widely in place of origin, from Egypt to Central Asia, and in time, from the early Islamic period in the seventh century to the thirteenth.

When we consider that she lived in the middle of the second millennium B.C., Hatnefer was fortunate to have been born into a culture that recognized a woman as an individual, not merely as the possession of her male relatives.

In European medieval and Renaissance practice, the design was invariably copied from a full-scale colored pattern, known as the cartoon, a practice that continues to this day.

Though the earliest references to the term “Hudson River School” in the 1870s were disparagingly aimed, the label has never been supplanted and fairly characterizes the artistic body, its New York headquarters, its landscape subject matter, and often literally its subject.

Silver objects in an astonishing variety of shapes and sizes reflect the wide array of influences that artisans translated into a characteristic Hungarian/Transylvanian style.

Old Testament prohibitions against worshipping graven images (Exodus 20:4) provided one of the most important precedents for Byzantine Iconoclasm.

Pliny’s retreats slipped into the landscape with terraced gardens and opened outward to natural surroundings through colonnades, or loggias, which replaced solid enclosing walls.

Queen Mothers were viewed as instrumental to the protection and well-being of the oba and, by extension, the kingdom.

While religious themes had dominated Limoges enamels in the Middle Ages and continued to cover the surfaces of Limoges plaques particularly in the first third of the sixteenth century, images of Greek and Roman subjects predominated from the 1530s.

In addition to their radical technique, the bright colors of Impressionist canvases were shocking for eyes accustomed to the more sober colors of Academic painting.

Color is not entirely eschewed in Joseon white ware. On the contrary, white ware painted with cobalt blue was highly prized, perhaps even more than undecorated white ware.

The popularity of Indian textiles is evidenced in the number of words that have made their way into English: calico, pajama, gingham, dungaree, chintz, and khaki.

The rapid shift from an agrarian to industrial economy and the growth of the business sector, with their attendant social and economic dislocations, spurred the development of a powerful ideology in which private and public spheres were considered antithetical.

Within a quarter-century of its birth, photography had established a ubiquitous presence in society.

In addition to philosophy, students engaged in rhetoric (the art of public speaking), mathematics, physics, botany, zoology, religion, music, politics, economics, and psychology.

Occasionally, the close scrutiny of early Netherlandish paintings yields quite another finding—that portraits of figures, and sometimes figures in their entirety, were reworked or initially painted by a different hand.

Increasing prosperity fueled demand for houses that were more comfortable and more elegant, while patrons grew more sophisticated, architects better esteemed, and craftsmen capable of realizing ever more ambitious designs.

By recasting these screens as pictorialized versions of actual clothing stands laden with lavishly patterned garments, we can associate them more closely with interior furnishings and displays of wealth.

The controversy between the two aesthetic camps—those who insisted that photographs should not be altered […] and those who believed that such manual intervention was necessary […]—was continued in lively debates that clarified the aesthetic role of photography in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century art.

The direct exchange of goods, such as textiles, metalware, and ceramics, inspired Tang craftsmen to experiment with novel techniques, shapes, and designs.

People of the ancient Near East inhabited a world that was saturated with supernatural powers, and the arts of the Isin-Larsa and Old Babylonian periods show the range of deities available to the individual as sources of protection and well-being.

Islamic arms and armor were often decorated with a wide variety of Qur’anic passages and pious invocations, which functioned as expressions of piety, as powerful defenses in the form of talismans, or simply as visually pleasing ornament.

Venetian merchants and diplomats definitely developed a taste for Islamic ceramics, textiles, arms and armor, metalwork, and manuscripts and displayed them in their homes as works of art alongside objects from other periods and places.

The art, poetry, and music of the Deccani courts were marked by an affinity for Persia; many rulers of this area were of Persian descent or were Shi’i and thus felt stronger ties to the west than to the Sunni rulers in northern India.

From biblical times onward, the concept of having an expensive textile underfoot has been associated with wealth, power, and sanctity.

With Giotto, the flat world of thirteenth-century Italian painting was transformed into an analogue for the real world, for which reason he is considered the father of modern European painting.

The commedia dell’arte—a type of improvisational street theater—provided a seemingly limitless source of subjects for both porcelain modelers and painters in the eighteenth century.

Pictures have always been required to live unobtrusively among furnishings of a period not their own, and frames have always been the vehicle enabling them to do so.

Responsive to the cutting of fine detail, it enables carvers to achieve great artistic and emotional expressiveness in a highly compressed format.

Elephant tusks—exotic, rare, and characterized by a pearly lustrous surface, were prized in medieval Europe for carving into luxurious objects.

Today, Bassano is recognized as the author of some of the most astonishing as well as original pictures of the sixteenth century: works that combine an acute attention to naturalistic detail with elegantly choreographed figures and an interest in everyday activities.

With Mesoamerica, Costa Rica is one of the two regions in which jade was extensively carved in Precolumbian times.

Generally small in scale, exhibiting an extraordinary command of the extremely difficult-to-carve stone medium, Olmec jade objects were of preference translucent blue green in color and were unsurpassed in the ancient Americas for compact, symmetrically balanced, three-dimensional form, and elegance of surface detail.

As the custom of building large temple complexes became more widespread, so did the production of images and other objects associated with ritual and worship.

The total absence of garments distinguishes the jinas from the otherwise similar images of Buddhas.

Cox produced lavishly ornamented articles for trade with the Far East, first with India and then with China, where the reception of his “toys” or “sing songs,” as the Chinese are believed to have called them, was at first a success.

Whistler began to envision and entitle his works with the abstract language of music, calling them symphonies, compositions, harmonies, nocturnes, and arrangements.

Etching offered Whistler the opportunity to sketch ideas quickly, then slowly refine and develop them through multiple states, creating variations with expressive inking.

What is new to Northern art of the time is Gossart’s introduction of mythological themes with nude figures portrayed with heightened eroticism.

[Van Eyck] frequently aimed to deceive the eye and amaze the viewer with his sheer artistry …

To fashion these blades, the smith not only must possess physical strength, but also patience, dexterity, and a refined eye for the limits of the material and the beauty of a finished sword.

Like a book, a handscroll is an intimate object that is held in the hands and is ideally viewed by only a few people at a time.

The burning of expensive, rare incense woods on special occasions increased their value, and made them a “once in a lifetime” experience.

Each tea gathering is a unique experience, so a particular assemblage of objects and people is never repeated.

Wealthy and powerful daimyô ordered magnificent wedding trousseaus for their daughters, and these trousseaus became symbolic of the social rank and the political alliances upon which the marriages were founded.

While writing boxes are designed for the practical function of housing writing implements such as the inkstone, they are also often consummate examples of lacquer art.

Experimentation with a wide range of pictorial modes, and with printmaking techniques as well, coincided with the growing popularity of Japanese woodcuts during the 1890s.

Throughout his career, Johns has included in most of his art certain marks and shapes that clearly display their derivation from factual, unimagined things in the world, including handprints and footprints, casts of parts of the body, or stamps made from objects found in his studio, such as the rim of a tin can.

The Enlightenment virtues of truth to nature, simplicity, and grace all found sublime expression through his ability to translate into marble both a subject’s personality and the vibrant essence of living flesh, their inner as well as outer life.

As in the pastorals of his former master Boucher, Fragonard’s rustic protagonists are envisioned with billowing silk clothing, engaged in amorous pursuits.

Breaking with traditional approaches to historical subjects and portraiture, Carpeaux infused his sculpture with a previously unseen freedom and immediacy.

Working privately, Greuze managed to build an admiring audience for his expressive studies of emotion and of the complexities of modern life.

In early Byzantine synagogues, specifically Jewish symbols—shofarot (ram’s horns), menorot (branched lamps), and Torah shrines—might appear alongside pomegranates, birds, lions, and fountains.

Jews served as both patrons and artists, and the art that does survive reveals awareness by Jews of the artistic currents of the day and regular interaction with the majority Christian or Muslim (in the case of Spain) community.

In the hands of the numerous craftsmen in Tielke’s workshop, these instruments became the decorative equivalents of the virtuosic music for which they were used.

His compositions are mostly invented and exhibit the most discriminating formal relationships, including those of color. In addition, Vermeer’s application of paint reveals extraordinary technical ability and time-consuming care.

Tactile and optical sensations coexist: nowhere else in Vermeer’s oeuvre does one find such a sculptural figure and such seemingly tangible objects, and yet the future painter of luminous interiors has already arrived.

While most landscapists of the day traveled extensively in search of picturesque or sublime scenery, Constable never left England.

The delicate texture of [Kensett’s] brushwork was concentrated to produce pure and exquisite states of light and atmosphere, today referred to as luminist.

In May 1876, accompanied by his mother and his sister Emily, Sargent began his first trip to the United States, which would include visits to the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia and Niagara Falls.

[Copley’s] swift ascent and sustained eminence were the result of an innate ability to handle paint and produce images that eclipsed anything executed by his predecessors in America.

Among his peers, [Townsend] was unique in habitually signing and dating his finest work.

The increased production of female figurines and phallic images of stone, as well as the practice of burying the deceased in shell mounds, suggest a rise in ritual practices.

There is no mistaking the distinctive style of buncheong ware. If Goryeo celadon embodies classical elegance, buncheong ware represents experimental spirit.

Though profoundly influenced by landscapists and history painters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Turner was an innovator who has been hailed as a forerunner of modernist abstraction.

Juan de Flandes adapted to his surroundings, altering his style to conform to the prevailing aesthetic and to the requirements of various patrons.

Although she may have taken up photography as an amateur and sought to apply it to the noble noncommercial aims of art, [Julia Margaret Cameron] immediately viewed her activity as a professional one, vigorously copyrighting, exhibiting, publishing, and marketing her photographs.

The Julio-Claudians were Roman nobles with an impressive ancestry, but their fondness for the ideals and lifestyle of the old aristocracy created conflicts of interest and duty.

The Kamakura and Nanbokucho eras were remarkable for the shift that occurred in the Japanese aesthetic. The highly refined sensibilities of the superceded aristocracy did not interest the new patrons.

The Kano school was the longest lived and most influential school of painting in Japanese history; its more than 300-year prominence is unique in world art history.

From its origins as the basic garb of the Highlander, Scotsmen and non-Scotsmen alike have embraced [the kilt] as uniform, formal and semi-formal wear, and casual everyday wear.

Taken as a whole, the sculptural [of Malagasy funerary arts] program evokes the balance, harmony, and symmetry of the physical and metaphysical worlds.