Art History Chapters

1. Introduction to Western Art History
2. Art in the Ancient Middle East to 400 B.C.
3. Art of the Hebrews and Jews, 2000 B.C. to A.D. 135
4. Art of the Ancient Greeks, 1200 B.C. to A.D. 146
5. Art of the Romans, 753 B.C. to A.D. 300
6. Christian Art in the Roman Empire, 4 B.C. to A.D. 1453
7. Art in the Early Middle Ages, A.D. 500 to 1000
8. Art in the High and Later Middle Ages, 1000 to 1500
9. Art of the Renaissance, 1400 to 1648
10. Art in Early Modern Europe, 1543 to 1815
11. Art during the Industrial Revolution, 1764 to 1914
12. Art in the Age of Imperialism and Nationalism, 1810 to 1918
13. Art during the InterWar Years and World War II, 1917 to 1945
14. Art during the Cold War, 1945 to 1993
15. Art during the Contemporary Era, 1991 to the Present

Top 25 Artists in Western Art

*A highly idiosyncratic and selective list for the purposes of an Art History course dealing with themes of Western Art. These are not necessarily the top best twenty-five artists -- some of my favorite greats are missing (Vermeer, Courbet, Monet, Van Gogh), but they rarely used narrative themes in their art. There are many other names worthy of this list if slightly different criteria were used. Make your own list!

Each name has a link to a website with more information on that artist. There are many more websites out there for each artist. Explore.

For some quick fun help in distinguishing some of these artists, click here.

 

Giotto di Bondone

Sandro Botticelli

Donatello (Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi)

Leonardo da Vinci

Michelangelo Buonoratti

Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio)

Hieronymous Bosch

Albrecht Dürer

Titian (Tiziano Vecello)

El Greco (Domenikos Theotocopoulos)

(Michelangelo Merisi da) Caravaggio

Pieter Breugel the Elder

Gianlorenzo Bernini

Artemisia Gentileschi

Diego Velázquez

Peter Paul Rubens

Rembrandt van Rijn

Francisco de Goya

Jacques-Louis David

J. M. W. Turner

Eugène Delacroix

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Auguste Rodin

Paul Gauguin

Pablo Picasso