The great artists, a guided tour through six centuries of art
From a Florentine workshop to a silver studio in New York, twelve artists and the movements that link them, with an honest look at how fame in art is made.
Tool
Art Timeline
Leonardo to Warhol, with the movements around them. Tap a life to see who overlapped with whom.
Art history is easier to hold in your head once you can see it. The timeline places the twelve artists of our history section on one axis from 1400 to 2000. Each bar runs from birth to death; behind them, coloured bands mark the approximate spans of the main movements.
How to read it
Overlaps are the interesting part. Michelangelo was still alive when Leonardo had already died, Rembrandt and Vermeer were working in the Dutch Republic in the same decades, and Hokusai was making woodblock prints in Edo while Monet was a child. Picasso, Dalí, Kahlo and Warhol all shared the twentieth century, but in very different worlds.
Why the movements are approximate
Movements are labels that historians apply afterwards, and they rarely start or end in a single year. The bands show common, rounded ranges: useful for orientation, not as exact borders. Artists also move between styles, which is why a long life like Picasso’s cannot be captured by one band.
Where to go next
Every bar links to a full portrait with key works and where to see them. For a wider overview, read Art movements at a glance, or let the Art Style Finder suggest where your own taste begins.
Questions
Why only twelve artists?
The timeline follows the artists portrayed in our Art History section, a deliberately small and well known selection that spans six centuries and four continents of influence. It will grow as new portraits are published. The movements in the background give context for everyone who is not yet on it.
Read more
Behind the tool
Art movements at a glance, from the Renaissance to Pop Art
Seventeen movements in one compact guide: when they happened, what they wanted, how to recognise them on a museum wall and which artists to look for first.
Leonardo da Vinci, the restless mind behind the Mona Lisa
Painter, engineer, anatomist and serial non-finisher: how a notary’s son from Vinci left only a handful of paintings and still became one of the most famous artists in history.