Western painting

Introduction
European Stone Age
- Upper Paleolithic
- Mesolithic
- Neolithic
Aegean and eastern Mediterranean Metal Age
- Early Bronze Age (3000–2000 bce)
  - Early Minoan
  - Early Cycladic
  - Early Helladic
- Middle Bronze Age (2000–1600 bce)
  - Middle Minoan
  - Middle Cycladic and Middle Helladic
- Late Bronze Age (1600–1100 bce)
  - Wall paintings
  - Vase paintings
    - Late Minoan
    - Late Mycenaean
    - Late Cypriot
Ancient Greek
- Dark Ages (1200–900 bce)
- Geometric period (c. 900–700 bce)
- Orientalizing period (c. 700–625 bce)
- Archaic period (c. 625–500 bce)
- Classical period (c. 500–323 bce)
  - Early Classical (c. 500–450 bce)
  - High Classical (c. 450–400 bce)
  - Late Classical (c. 400–323 bce)
- Hellenistic period (c. 323–1st century bce)
Western Mediterranean
- Etruscan
- Roman
  - Etruscan and Hellenistic Greek influences
  - Roman paintings
  - Early Christian
  - Book illustration in antiquity
Eastern Christian
- Early Byzantine Period (330–717)
  - Icons
  - Illuminated manuscripts
- Iconoclastic Age (717–843)
- Middle Byzantine period (843–1204)
  - Icons
  - Wall painting
  - Illuminated manuscripts
- Late Byzantine period (1204–1453)
  - Icons
  - Wall painting
  - Illuminated manuscripts
- Post-Byzantine Russia
- Regional variations in Eastern Christian painting
  - Georgia
  - Armenia
  - Coptic Egypt
The Middle Ages and medieval Christendom
- Middle Ages
  - Rome and Italy, c. 600–850
  - England and Ireland, c. 650–850
  - Merovingian Gaul
- Early Middle Ages
  - Carolingian empire
  - The 10th century
  - Late Anglo-Saxon England
  - France
  - Ottonian Germany
- Romanesque
  - Italy
  - France
  - England
  - Spain
  - The Meuse Valley
  - Germany and Austria
- Late 12th century
- Gothic
  - Early Gothic
  - High Gothic
  - Italian Gothic
  - International Gothic
  - Late Gothic
Renaissance
- Early Renaissance in Italy
  - Masaccio
  - Florentine painters of the mid-15th century
  - Late 15th-century Florentine painters
  - Diffusion of the innovations of the Florentine school
  - Leonardo da Vinci
- High Renaissance in Italy
  - Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo
  - The High Renaissance in Venice
- Italian Mannerism and Late Renaissance
  - The hallmarks of Mannerism
  - Mannerist painters in Florence and Rome
- Renaissance outside Italy
  - France
  - Spain
  - Germany
  - Low Countries
  - Bohemia
Baroque
- Early and High Baroque in Italy
- Late Baroque and Rococo
  - Spain and Portugal
  - Low Countries
    - The Spanish Netherlands
    - The United Provinces
  - France
  - Britain
    - The 17th century
    - The 18th century
  - Colonial Americas
    - North America
  - Central Europe
  - Poland
  - Russia
  - Scandinavia
Neoclassical and Romantic
- Neoclassicism
  - Britain
  - France
  - Germany and Austria
  - Italy
  - Other countries
- Romanticism
  - Britain
  - Germany
  - France
  - United States
  - Russia
Modern
- Origins in the 19th century
  - Impressionism
  - Symbolism
  - The end of the 19th-century tradition
- The 20th century
  - Cubism and its consequences
  - Fantasy and the irrational
Postwar Western art: 1945–2000
- After 1945
- Modernism and postmodernism defined
- Painting in Europe and the United States: 1945–70
  - Abstraction
  - Figuration
- Duchamp’s legacy and the questioning of the art object: 1950–70
  - American Neo-Dada: Cage, Rauschenberg, and Johns
  - Art and consumerism: French and Italian art in the 1950s
  - Pop art in Britain and the United States: the 1960s
- The fortunes of sculpture: 1950s–2000
  - Minimalism
  - “Anti-Form” and post-Minimalist sculpture in the United States and Britain: 1967–2000
  - Germany and Italy: Joseph Beuys and Arte Povera
- The dematerialization of art: the 1960s and ’70s
  - Institutional critique, feminism, and conceptual art: 1968 and its aftermath
  - Land art
  - Body and performance art
- Art and postmodernism: the 1980s and ’90s
  - The “return to painting”
  - Politics, commerce, and abjection in 1980s art

References & Edit History Related Topics

Images, Videos & Interactives

Oil painting self-portrait by Judith Leyster showing her seated at an easel, smiling at the viewer while holding a paintbrush and palette, with a violinist painting on the canvas beside her.

Lascaux cave: Hall of Bulls

Minoan civilization: ships in procession

Theseus killing the Minotaur

Fresco in the Villa of Livia, Rome

Our Lady of Vladimir

Related Questions

Oil painting self-portrait by Judith Leyster showing her seated at an easel, smiling at the viewer while holding a paintbrush and palette, with a violinist painting on the canvas beside her. — Judith Leyster: Self-Portrait Self-Portrait, oil on canvas by Judith Leyster, c. 1630; in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Western painting

art

Written by

David HopkinsAll

Fact-checked by

Britannica Editors

Last updated

Sep. 17, 2026 •History

Western painting, history of Western painting from its beginnings in prehistoric times to the present. Painting, the execution of forms and shapes on a surface by means of pigment (but see also drawing for discussion of depictions in chalks, inks, pastels, and crayons), has been continuously practiced by humans for some 20,000 years. Together with other activities that may have been ritualistic in origin but have come to be designated as artistic (such as music...

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