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60,000 BCE
Fragments of engraved ostrich eggshells
Personal ornamentation and engraved designs are the earliest evidence of art. They are tied up with the development of human cognition. -
30,000 BCE
Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc in the Ardéche valley
The cave's drawings depict other large animals including horses, mammoths, musk ox, ibex, reindeer, deer, panther, and owl . -
25,200 BCE
Apollo 11
Seven painted stone slabs of brown-grey quartzite, depicting a variety of animals painted in charcoal, ochre and white,interpreted various felines and/or bovids; one in particular has been observed to be either a zebra, giraffe or ostrich. -
25,000 BCE
The Great Sphinx
Right next to the causeway leading from Khafre’s valley temple to the mortuary temple sits the first truly colossal sculpture in Egyptian history: the Great Sphinx. Many believe it was carved for Khafre. -
24,000 BCE
King Menkaure and queen,
The stunning diad of the king with his primary queen, Khamerernebty II as well as a number of triads showing the king being embraced by various. -
2920 BCE
Palette of Narmer
The earliest royal monuments, such as the Narmer Palette made around 3100 B.C.E., looking very much like royal costumes and poses as those seen on later rulers, even Ptolemaic kings on their temples 3000 years later. -
1400 BCE
Pottery stemmed bowl decorated with a procession of riders in chariots
The upper part of the vase is painted with chariots, pulled by elongated horses, in which ride a charioteer and a passenger. -
900 BCE
Centaur
At fourteen inches high, the creature is composed of a horse torso made on a potter’s wheel and hand-formed human limbs and features. Alluding to mythology and perhaps a particular story, this centaur embodies the cultural richness of this period. -
540 BCE
Achilles killing the Amazon Queen Penthesilea
black-figured amphora (wine-jar), signed by Exekias as potter and attributed to him as painter, 46 cm tall, Athens, Greece. Penthesilea brought her Amazon warriors to help the Trojans defend their city, but was killed in combat with Achilles, the greatest of the Greek warriors. -
425 BCE
The good shepard
Almost nothing is known about Jesus beyond biblical accounts, although we do know quite a bit more about the cultural and political context in which he lived -
Jan 1, 1120
The Healing of the Blind Man and the Raising of Lazarus
This was one of the many miracles Christ performed that are recorded in the Gospels. Christ was friends with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, who were all siblings. Lazarus became ill and his sisters went to Christ for help. Lazarus died and was in the grave for four days before Christ raised him from the dead by calling him out of his tomb. -
Jan 1, 1430
Trinity
Christianity say that God is a trinity (God the father, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus Christ)* and that it was Jesus’s death on the cross his sacrifice hat allowed for human beings to have the possibility of eternal life in heaven. -
Jan 1, 1432
Ghent Altarpiece
singing, costumed, organ-pumping chorister angels to its gospel-choir legions of saints, soldiers, prophets and martyrs, to its central panel depicting the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. -
Jan 1, 1455
Madonna and Child with Two Angels
Madonna and Christ Child that have become so real the figures appear so humans that in some ways we can hardly tell that these are divine figures -
Jan 1, 1470
Baptism of Christ
One angel should look more like a boy that's the Early Renaissance angel (and the other angel should look like truly divine, sent by God from heaven (that's Leonardo's angel). -
Jan 1, 1514
The Feast of the Gods
unlikely subject for this Venetian master. Bellini continued to challenge himself by creating a raucous scene of 17 classical gods and goddesses eating and drinking in a lush forest clearing, painted in brilliantly rich, blended colors typical of the Venetian school of painting. -
Jan 1, 1518
The worship of venus
a Roman right of worship conducted in honor of the goddess Venus each 1 April. -
The Crowning with Thorns
Caravaggio painted powerful and realism, accompanied by bold contrasts of light and dark, and tightly-cropped compositions that enhanced the physical and emotional immediacy of the depicted narrative. -
Elevation of the Cross
stunning, gold-covered chapels and tabernacles, and strikingly-realistic polychrome sculpture. -
The Stonebreakers
The artist's concern for the plight of the poor is evident, two figures labor to break and remove stone from a road that is being built -
The Gleaners
The painting, was known for showing hard-working, but idealized peasants, Courbet depicts figures who wear ripped and tattered clothing -
View from the Window at Gras
a small hole in the wall of a darkened box that would pass light through the hole and project an upside down image of whatever was outside the box. -
Paris Boulevard,
There is far more detail than in earlier photographs. We can see the panes in the windows and the sharp corners of the building in the front of the image. The objects are not blurry masses of light and dark, but defined and separate structures -
Impression Sunrise
Impressionists established their own exhibition and this was one of the only places your art would be seen -
Coquelicots, La promenade
These young Realists and Impressionists questioned the long establiished hierarchy of subject matter. They believed that landscapes and genres scenes were worthy and important. -
Portrait of Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein was a formidable presence in Paris of the early 20th century. An influential writer, she, along with her brother, was an important patron of the arts, known for hosting salons that brought together some of the period’s most famous artists, writers, and intellectuals. -
Bonheur de Vivre
Picasso’s portrait demonstrates the angular distortions and formal experimentation that would characterize his artwork through the invention of Cubism. -
Ocean
landscape to arrangements of vertical and horizontal lines, exemplifies this period in Mondrian’s career. He wanted to push beyond Cubism’s strategy of fragmenting forms, and move toward pure abstraction -
Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow
Mondrian further developed his style, ruling out compositions that were too dynamic, concluding that asymmetrical arrangements of geometric shapes in primary colors best represent universal forces. -
Diary of a Seducer
When Krasner first met Pollock she saw that, instead of abstracting his forms from nature, he began with a blank canvas upon which he would begin to arrange skeins of color in the all-over technique for which he became famous. -
untitled
Untitled is a relatively small work consisting of tightly painted, gridded crescents of black and white paint with flecks of vibrant color, -
Girl with a ball
Pop artists applied their paint to imitate the look of industrial printing techniques. Benday dots, a mechanical process used to print pulp comics. -
Gold Marilyn Monroe
The main image on a gold background brings a tradition of painted icons, transforming the Hollywood starlet into a Byzantine Madonna that reflects our obsession with celebrity
