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50 BCE
The Canterbury Tales - by Geoffrey Chaucer.
A series of tales that portray Chaucer's view of English society at the time. The majority of the literature produced during the Middle Ages was written by religious clerics and monks. Few other people knew how to read and write. Much of what they wrote was hymns, or songs, about God. Some also wrote philosophical documents about religion. Some secular, meaning non-religious, books were written as well. -
50 BCE
Byzantine Art (Medieval Age)
The start of the Middle Ages is often called the Dark Ages. The art during that time was produced by artists from the Eastern Roman Empire, Byzantium. Byzantine art was characterized by its lack of realism. The artists focused on the symbolism of their art. Paintings were flat with no shadows and the subjects were generally very serious and somber. The subjects of the paintings were almost entirely religious with many paintings being of Christ and the Virgin Mary. -
Jan 1, 1445
Music
Science also played a part in the creation of music. Musicians learned how the pitch changes by lengthening or shortening the size of the string on stringed instruments. Once again, symmetry became a part of the music they created. Musicians studied the Greek drama and tried to create music that would go with the words of their stories. This was the beginning of opera, where music and theater are combined. -
Jan 1, 1501
David by Michelangelo
Because of the nature of the hero it represented, the statue soon came to symbolize the defense of civil liberties embodied in the Republic of Florence, an independent city-state threatened on all sides by more powerful rival states and by the hegemony of the Medici family. The eyes of David, with a warning glare, were turned towards Rome. The statue was moved to the Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence, in 1873, and later replaced at the original location by a replica. -
Jan 1, 1517
95 Theses by Martin Luther
But in 1517 Luther penned a document attacking the Catholic Church’s corrupt practice of selling “indulgences” to absolve sin. His “95 Theses,” which propounded two central beliefs—that the Bible is the central religious authority and that humans may reach salvation only by their faith and not by their deeds—was to spark the Protestant Reformation. Although these ideas had been advanced before, Martin Luther codified them at a moment in history ripe for religious reformation. -
Jan 1, 1529
Altdorfer, Albrecht
This is the most famous painting of Altdorfer. Its the victory of the young Alexander the Great in 333 B.C. over the Persian army of King Darius III in the battle of Issus. But Altdorfer is also unlike Grünewald: he makes the human figure incidental to its spatial setting, whether natural or architectural. The soldiers have their counterpart in his other late pictures, and he painted at least one landscape with no figures at all--the earliest "pure" landscape we know of since antiquity. -
Aeneas and his family fleeing Troy by Barocci
It is hardly surprising that Barocci was unhappy, given that his paintings are characterized by softness and subtle coloristic changes rather than the sculptural form and bulging muscles that Agostino emphasized in his print. The buildings of Troy seen here recall monuments in Rome, which was possibly an intentional detail to foreshadow Aeneas' fate. -
The Conquest of Granada by John Dryden
He proposed, in the Preface to the printed play, a new type of drama that celebrated heroic figures and actions in a meter and rhyme that emphasized the dignity of the action. Dryden's innovation is a notable turn in poetic diction in England, as he was attempting to find an English meter and vocabulary that could correspond to the ancient Latin heroic verse structure. Dryden was attempting to turn the tide to admirable subjects. -
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) stated that, "The sole and end aim of figured-bass should be nothing else than God's glory and the recreation of the mind. Where this object is not kept in view, there can be no true music but only infernal scraping and bawling." Music was often utilized as a means of creating a devotional frame in which souls could be brought more easily to the Almighty. -
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray
The poem’s origins are unknown, but it was partly inspired by Gray’s thoughts following the death of the poet Richard West in 1742. The poem is an elegy in name but not in form; it employs a style similar to that of contemporary odes, but it embodies a meditation on death, and remembrance after death. The poem argues that the remembrance can be good and bad, and the narrator finds comfort in pondering the lives of the obscure rustics buried in the churchyard. -
Candide by Voltaire
The work describes the abrupt cessation of this lifestyle, followed by Candide's slow, painful disillusionment as he witnesses and experiences great hardships in the world. Voltaire concludes with Candide, if not rejecting optimism outright, advocating a deeply practical precept, "we must cultivate our garden", in lieu of the Leibnizian mantra of Pangloss, "all is for the best" in the "best of all possible worlds". -
The Swing by Jean-Honoré Fragonard
According to the memoirs of the dramatist Charles Collé asked first Gabriel François Doyen to make this painting of him and his mistress. Doyen refused and passed on the commission to Fragonard.The man had requested a portrait of his mistress seated on a swing being pushed by a bishop, but Fragonard painted a layman. This style of "frivolous" painting soon became the target of the philosophers of the Enlightenment, who demanded a more serious art which would show the nobility of man. -
Oath of the Horatii by Jacques-Louis David
The painting was meant to be loyal to the state and therefore to the king. Nevertheless, David departed from the agreed-upon scene, painting this scene instead. The painting was not completed in Paris, but rather in Rome, where David was visited by his pupil Jean-Germaine Drouais who had himself recently won the Prix de Rome. Ultimately, David's picture manifests a progressive outlook, deeply influenced by Enlightenment ideas, that eventually contributed to the overthrow of the monarchy. -
Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix
Liberty Leading the People is a painting by Eugène Delacroix commemorating the July Revolution of 1830, which toppled King Charles X of France. A woman personifying the Goddess of Liberty leads the people forward over a barricade and the bodies of the fallen, holding the flag of the French Revolution – the tricolour flag,in one hand and brandishing a bayonetted musket with the other. The figure of Liberty is also viewed as a symbol of France and the French Republic known as Marianne. -
Music in the Tuileries by Edouard Manet
The painting depicts the gatherings of Parisians at weekly concerts in the Tuileries gardens near the Louvre, although no musicians are depicted. While the picture was regarded as unfinished by some,[2] the suggested atmosphere imparts a sense of what the Tuileries gardens were like at the time; one may imagine the music and conversation. -
A Private View at the Royal Academy by William Powell Frith
It depicts a group of distinguished Victorians visiting the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1881, just after the death of the Prime Minister, whose portrait by John Everett Millais was included on a screen at the special request of Queen Victoria. Frith worked on the painting through much of 1881 and 1882. He later said in My Autobiography and Reminiscences, published in 1887, that "I wished to hit the folly of listening to self-elected critics in matters of taste, whether in dress or art." -
The Scream by Edvard Munch
The German title Munch gave these works is Der Schrei der Natur (The Scream of Nature). The works show a figure with an agonized expression against a landscape with a tumultuous orange sky. Arthur Lubow has described The Scream as "an icon of modern art, a Mona Lisa for our time." Among theories for the reddish sky is the artist's memory of the effects of the volcanic eruption of Krakatoa, which tinted sunset skies red in parts of the West for months during 1883 and 1884. -
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon by Pablo Picasso
In this adaptation of Primitivism and abandonment of perspective in favor of a flat, two-dimensional picture plane, Picasso makes a radical departure from traditional European painting. This proto-Cubist work is widely considered to be seminal in the early development of both Cubism and Modern art. Les Demoiselles was revolutionary and controversial, and led to widespread anger and disagreement, even amongst the painter's closest associates and friends. -
The Disquieting Muses by Giorgio de Chirico
The Disquieting Muses was painted during World War I, when De Chirico was in Ferrara. The spaces are dominated and interpenetrated fantastically, to such an extent that, at times, the lyric simultaneity of different coordinate systems is reached; this clearly happens in Metaphysical Interior and also in The Disquieting Muse where the box in the foreground is seen through the sitting Muse's perspective. -
The Surrealist Manifesto by André Breton
The text includes numerous examples of the applications of Surrealism to poetry and literature, but makes it clear that its basic tenets can be applied to any circumstance of life; not merely restricted to the artistic realm. The importance of the dream as a reservoir of Surrealist inspiration is also highlighted."There is a man cut in two by the window". This phrase echoes Breton's apprehension of Surrealism as the juxtaposition of "two distant realities" united to create a new one. -
Blue Poles by Jackson Pollock
At the time of the painting's creation, Pollock preferred not to assign names to his works, but rather numbers; hence, the original title of the painting was simply "Number 11"' in 1952. In 1954, the new title Blue Poles was first seen at an exhibition at the Sidney Janis Gallery and reportedly originated from Pollock himself.
According to art historian Dennis Phillips, the specific rather than ambiguous title "limits our field of comprehension and does the painting a singular disservice." -
Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune by Claude Debussy
Known in English as Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, is a symphonic poem for orchestra by Claude Debussy, approximately 10 minutes in duration. It was first performed in Paris on December 22, 1894, conducted by Gustave Doret. The flute solo was played by Georges Barrère. Debussy's work later provided the basis for the ballet Afternoon of a Faun choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky.
