History of Painting 31,000 years ago c. 100 Rhinoceroses, lions and mammoth feature on Realistic portraits, done in hot wax and preserved the walls of the Chauvet cave, in southern in coffins at Fayyum, vividly depict inhabitants of France. Roman Egypt. 30,000 years ago c. 250 Painted and engraved images, on the rock face in The Christians of Rome use the catacombs as tomb a cave near Twyfelfontein in Namibia, date from chambers, and decorate the walls with murals on this period. New Testament themes 16,000 years ago c. 600 The walls of the complex of caves at Lascaux in The walls of caves at Ajanta are profusely France are covered, over the years, with a vast decorated with Buddhist murals. number of paintings of animals. c. 650 15,000 years ago At Dunhuang, an oasis on the Silk Road, as many The walls of Altamira, an extensive cave in Spain, as 500 caves are decorated with Buddhist murals. are decorated with paintings and engraved images of horses, deer and above all bison c. 650 The Book of Durrow, one of the earliest of the 3100 BC great Celtic manuscripts, is written and The Egyptians paint murals on the walls of tombs, illuminated in Ireland. designed to help the occupants in the next world. c. 698 1850 BC The Lindisfarne Gospels are written and Wrestlers are painted on the walls of an Egyptian illuminated by Celtic monks on the Scottish island tomb, performing most of the holds and falls still in of Lindisfarne. use today. c. 1300 1600 BC Mosaic begins to yield to fresco, as the chief A bull-fighting fresco in the palace of medium for the decoration of Christian Knossos is linked with the island’s cult of churches. the bull. c. 1300 1550 BC Tabriz under the Mongol Il-khans is the first Egyptian tombs include paintings of a kind to help centre of Persian miniature painting. the occupants in the next world, whether in the Book of the Dead or on the walls. c. 1305 Enrico degli Scrovegni employs Giotto to paint 1525 BC the cycle of frescoes in his chapel in Padua. The eruption of a volcano, on the island of Thera, entombs and preserves houses with c. 1308 frescoes in the Minoan city of Akrotiri. The cathedral authorities in Siena commission from Duccio the great altarpiece which 550 BC becomes known as the Maestà. The murals of Etruscan tombs, such as the Tomb of the Lionesses in Tarquinia, c. 1397 give a lively glimpse of an earlier tradition in The English king, Richard II, commissions a Greek art. diptych (the Wilton Diptych) showing himself being presented to the Virgin and Child. c. 1400 1450 The final style of medieval painting, common to Piero della Francesca paints masterpieces in his all Europe, is known as International Gothic small home town of San Sepolcro because of its slender and elegant figures. 1452 1412 Étienne Chevalier commissions from Jean The three Limburg brothers illustrate for the Fouquet a series of illustrations for his Book of duke of Berry the Très Riches Heures, one of the Hours. masterpieces of International Gothic. 1460 1423 Oil paints, long familiar in the Netherlands, Masaccio paints some of the frescoes in the begin to be adopted in Italy in place of tempera. chapel of a Florentine silk merchant, Felice Brancacci, in Santa Maria del Carmine. 1465 The Sicilian artist Antonello da Messina adopts 1430 the Flemish technique of painting in oils. Robert Campin, also known as the Master of Flémalle, brings to Flemish painting a natural and 1468 everyday quality which is entirely new. Jerome van Aken works almost exclusively in his native s’ Hertogenbosch, from which 1432 he derives the name Hieronymus Bosch. A new altarpiece is installed in the cathedral in Ghent, introducing the powerful realism of 1470 Jan van Eyck. Sandro Botticelli is established as one of the leading painters of Florence, working in 1434 particular for the Medici. Giovanni Arnolfini, a merchant from Lucca trading in Bruges, commissions from 1472 van Eyck a portrait of himself and his wife. Leonardo da Vinci joins the painters’ guild in Florence, probably after training with 1435 Verrocchio. Chancellor Nicolas Rolin, of Burgundy, commissions an altarpiece from Jan van Eyck. 1475 Tommaso Portinari, the Medici agent in 1435 Bruges, commissions an altarpiece from Rogier van der Weyden, the third in the Hugo van der Goes for his family church in extraordinary trio of Flemish artists of the Florence. 1430s, is appointed painter to the city of Brussels. 1475 Giovanni Bellini becomes the key figure in the 1436 development of the Renaissance style in Venice. Perspective fascinates Italian Renaissance painters after the publication of Alberti’s 1480 treatise on the subject, De Pictura. Botticelli paints the Birth of Venus and Spring for the villa of a Medici cousin of 1443 Lorenzo the Magnificent. The Dominican convent of San Marco, in Florence, is provided with a serenely beautiful 1489 series of frescoes by Fra Angelico and his Leonardo da Vinci begins an unprecedented assistants. series of detailed anatomical drawings, based on corpses dissected in Rome. 1500 1577 The lively realism of Kamal-ud-din Bihzad lays Domenikos Theotokopoulos moves to Spain, the basis of both the Persian and the Mughal where he becomes known as El Greco. schools of painting. 1587 1503 Nicholas Hilliard paints the delightful miniature Hieronymus Bosch paints the most detailed of known simply as Young Man among Roses. his exotically surreal canvases, The Garden of Earthly Delights. 1608 The Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens complete 1505 s an altarpiece in Rome which is an early Leonardo captures the enigmatic smile of Lisa masterpiece of the baroque. Gherardini, known now as the Mona Lisa. 1618 1508 The 19-year-old Flemish painter Anthony van Michelangelo begins work in Rome on the Dyck is employed by Rubens in Antwerp as his ceiling of the Sistine chapel. chief assistant. 1508 1624 Raphael is summoned to Rome by Julius II and is Nicolas Poussin arrives in Rome, where he given a major commission for frescoes. develops the tradition of French classicism 1509 1628 Raphael begins work on the frescoes in the The Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn pope’s apartment in the Vatican, known as the develops a life-long interest in Stanze (‘Rooms’). self-portraiture. 1510 1631 Giorgione and Titian introduce the richness Rembrandt moves from his home town of of colour which characterizes the high Leiden to set up a studio in Amsterdam. Renaissance style in Venice. 1634 1517 Rembrandt marries Saskia van Uylenburgh, who Leonardo da Vinci moves to France, on the will feature in many of his paintings. invitation of Francis I. 1653 1520 Jan Vermeer marries and begins a quiet career The German painter Hans Holbein the Younger as a painter and art dealer in his home town of establishes his own studio in Basel. Delft. 1525 1655 Lucas Cranach’s studio in Wittenberg has a Diego Velazquez paints his only surviving female profitable line in naked female figures from nude, The Toilet of Venus (known as the Rokeby mythology. Venus). 1533 1721 The Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, makes Jean-Antoine Watteau paints the most splendid Titian his court painter (an arrangement shop sign in history, for his friend Gersaint. continued by Philip II). 1751 1869 French painter Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin Young French artists Claude Monet and Pierre- returns to the subject matter that first took his Auguste Renoir paint together in the open air at interest, still life. La Grenouillère, developing the Impressionist Style. 1764 Catherine the Great founds the Hermitage as a 1888 court museum attached to the Winter Palace in Vincent van Gogh invites Paul Gauguin to come St Petersburg. and paint with him at Arles, in the south of France. 1775 1901 John Singleton Copley, already established as A change of palette by Pablo Picasso takes him America’s greatest portrait painter, moves to into what becomes known as his Blue Period. London. 1907 1778 Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, a 15-year-old Elisabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun earns violent transition into cubism, is a turning point in enough from painting portraits to support the western art. rest of her family. 1910 1783 The part-time English painter L.S. Lowry begins a Jacques-Louis David, establishing a reputation lifetime career in a Manchester property with his severe classical paintings, is elected to company. the French academy. 1911 1790 Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is stolen from the English painter J.M.W. Turner is only 15 when a Louvre in Paris. painting of his, a watercolour, is first exhibited at the Royal Academy. 1912 Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, 1801 No.2 creates a stir. Bonaparte Crossing the Alps (in 1800) is the first of several paintings by Jacques-Louis David 1913 celebrating the future emperor. Leonardo’s Mona Lisa is recovered two years after its theft when the thief, Vincenzo Perugia, tries to 1815 sell it to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence Jacques-Louis David, unmistakably identified as Napoleon’s painter, is banished from France after 1914 the fall of the emperor and moves to Brussels. The Russian painter and sculptor Vladimir Tatlin develops an abstract style to which he gives the 1820 name Constructivism. French painter Théodore Géricault begins a two-year visit to Britain. 1922 Wassily Kandinsky takes up a teaching post at the 1827 Bauhaus in Weimar. English artist Samuel Palmer moves to Shoreham, in Kent, for the most inspired years of his career. 1934 British painter Francis Bacon has his first solo 1838 show in London.