The story of art

Print version:

Introduction : on art and artists

1. Strange beginnings : prehistoric and primitive peoples ; Ancient America

2. Art for eternity : Egypt, Mesopotamia, Crete

3. The great awakening : Greece, seventh to fifth century BC

4. The realm of beauty : Greece and the Greek world, fourth century BC to first century AD

5. World conquerors : Romans, Buddhists, Jews and Christians, first to fourth century AD

6. A parting of ways : Rome and Byzantium, fifth to thirteenth century

7. Looking eastwards : Islam, China, second to thirteenth century

8. Western art in the melting pot : Europe, sixth to eleventh century

9. The church militant : the twelfth century

10. The church triumphant : the thirteenth century

11. Courtiers and burghers : the fourteenth century

12. The conquest of reality : the early fifteenth century

13. Tradition and innovation I : the later fifteenth century in Italy

14. Tradition and innovation II : the fifteenth century in the North

15. Harmony attained : Tuscany and Rome, early sixteenth century

16. Light and colour : Venice and Northern Italy, early sixteenth century

17. The new learning spreads : Germany and the Netherlands, early sixteenth century

18. A crisis of art : Europe, later sixteenth century

19. Vision and visions : Catholic Europe, first half of the seventeenth century

20. The mirror of nature : Holland, seventeenth century

21. Power and glory I : Italy, later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

22. Power and glory II : France, Germany and Austria, late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries

23. The age of reason : England and France, eighteenth century

24. The break in tradition : England, American and France, late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries

25. Permanent Revolution : the nineteenth century

26. In search of new standards : the late nineteenth century

27. Experimental art : the first half of the twentieth century

28. A story without end : the triumph of modernism

Another turning of the tide

The changing past

A note on art books

Chronological charts

Maps

List of illustrations by location

Index and glossary