Timeline of Art

Age of Exploration
Trans-continental travel and the enlightenment

Age of Exploration, Timeline of Art

When you're looking at some “old paintings” chances are pretty good these artworks sit somewhere in a wide, loose slice of the timeline called by many names: Age of Discovery, the Contact Period, or the Age of Exploration. Leonardo da Vinci and the Vitruvian man? Yep he’s in there. Hokusai and his Great Wave? Definitely. Like most efforts to slice up history into clean lines, the Age of Exploration is a flawed, blurry concept—but its unifying theme is travel.

There was no single invention or political maneuver that kicked off the Age of Exploration. Many innovations, technologies and techniques came together to enable global travel, at first slowly, and then accelerating faster and faster into the first true global networks. For millennia, travel over land had been arduous and dangerous, and without sophisticated navigational tools, sea trade had largely stayed close to shore. When explorers returned with tales of far off lands bringing stories and exotic treasures, it was exciting, but it didn't change the economy. It didn't change culture. But the proliferation of the magnetic compass, an already ancient Chinese invention, evolutions of ship design like the Portuguese caravel and the massive Chinese bao chuan treasure ships, the miraculous maps of Arab geographers like Muhammad al-Idrisi, and many more right-place-right-time innovations, previously isolated cultures were connected by new trade routes, leading to an explosion of new media, new products, new culture.

It all ended badly when European powers realized they could extract more profit from the cultures they traded with if they colonized them, enslaving people and strip mining sacred artifacts like the Benin Bronzes. But the impact of global contact was also profound for art. New forms of expression, new sciences, and new beliefs were suddenly on the table.


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Reed Enger, "Age of Exploration, Trans-continental travel and the enlightenment," in Obelisk Art History, Published October 20, 2016; last modified November 08, 2022, http://www.arthistoryproject.com/timeline/age-of-discovery/.

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Italian Renaissance, Age of Exploration

Italian Renaissance

Cultural rebirth though intellectual inquiry

1350 – 1500
Ming Dynasty, Age of Exploration

Ming Dynasty

Orderly government and social stability

1368 – 1644
Kingdom of Kongo, Age of Exploration

Kingdom of Kongo

500 years of spirit objects and power plays

1390 – 1891
Northern Renaissance, Age of Exploration

Northern Renaissance

How Humanism beats down Feudalism with the printing press

1420 – 1650
Kingdom of Benin, Age of Exploration

Kingdom of Benin

Sculpting divine history

1440 – 1897
Spanish Renaissance, Age of Exploration

Spanish Renaissance

Religion and the laws of perspective.

1492 – 1600
Mughal Art, Age of Exploration

Mughal Art

Power, sophistication, luxury and might.

1500 – 1800
Mannerism, Age of Exploration

Mannerism

Tension, distortion and ice-cold style

1520 – 1600
Baroque, Age of Exploration

Baroque

The drama of deep color and shadow

1600 – 1725
Edo Period, Age of Exploration

Edo Period

Art, culture, and NO OUTSIDERS

1603 – 1868
Qing Dynasty, Age of Exploration

Qing Dynasty

Benevolent emperors and the height of literature and art

1644 – 1912
Academic Art, Age of Exploration

Academic Art

Allegory, craft, and the unrelenting dictatorship of the Academy

1661 – 1900
The Enlightenment, Age of Exploration

The Enlightenment

Dare to Know

1685 – 1815
Western Esoteric Art, Age of Exploration

Western Esoteric Art

The best truth is secret truth

1690 – 1947
Rococo, Age of Exploration

Rococo

Opulent, playful embrace of the ornate — 18th century swag.

1715 – 1774
Neoclassicism, Age of Exploration

Neoclassicism

Classical ideals, tourism, and bloody revolution

1760 – 1830
Next Era
Industrial Revolution, Timeline of Art

Industrial Revolution

Mass production, the camera, and a return to nature

1800 – 1900

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