STADIA ART / A JOURNEY THROUGH TIME
Art changes.
So does the way we see.
From Renaissance workshops to the first experiments in abstraction, explore the ideas, people and paintings that changed European art.
Explore the timeline
MORE THAN A LIST OF DATES
A history of
changing perspectives.
Art history is a conversation across generations. Artists learn from earlier work, respond to the world around them and challenge the conventions they inherit.
This timeline follows selected milestones in European painting and sculpture. Read each event alongside its wider context: what changes in the image, and what changes in the way we look?
Renaissance
A new way of seeing
Artists study the human body, the natural world and the art of antiquity. Perspective gives images a convincing sense of space, while portraits place individual lives at the centre of attention.
Florence’s Baptistery competition
A competition for bronze doors becomes a landmark in the story of the Florentine Renaissance.
The contest brings sculpture, craftsmanship and public ambition together. It offers a starting point for this selection, rather than a single date on which the Renaissance began.
Leonardo da Vinci is born
Leonardo is born in Vinci, in Tuscany.
His later work connects painting with close observation of anatomy, light and nature. Looking carefully becomes a way to understand how the world works.
Michelangelo is born
Michelangelo is born in Caprese, Italy.
Across sculpture, painting and architecture, he explores the expressive power of the human figure. The body becomes a vehicle for tension, strength and emotion.
Leonardo begins the Mona Lisa
Around 1503, Leonardo begins the portrait now known as the Mona Lisa.
Soft transitions between light and shade give the face an extraordinary sense of presence. The portrait invites attention to expression as well as likeness.
The Sistine Chapel ceiling
Michelangelo completes the painted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
A vast architectural setting becomes a sequence of monumental figures and stories. The work shows how painting can shape an entire space, not only a framed surface.
Baroque
Light becomes drama
Painting draws the viewer into the scene. Strong contrasts, expressive gestures and carefully staged compositions turn biblical stories, portraits and everyday encounters into vivid experiences.
Caravaggio is born
Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio, is born.
His mature paintings bring sacred scenes close to everyday life. Dramatic illumination directs the eye towards faces, hands and decisive moments.
The Baroque takes shape
Around 1600, a dramatic visual language develops in European art.
Movement, contrast and emotional immediacy help images engage their audiences. The date is approximate: styles overlap and develop differently across regions.
Rembrandt paints The Night Watch
Rembrandt completes his celebrated group portrait in Amsterdam.
Instead of arranging everyone in a static row, he creates a scene full of movement. Light guides attention through the group and gives the painting its theatrical energy.
A changing world
Painting the moment
Artists increasingly explore contemporary life and the experience of looking. Light, colour and visible brushwork become central to pictures that capture a changing world.
Claude Monet is born
Monet is born in Paris.
His later paintings explore how light changes a scene. Rather than treating colour as fixed, he observes its relationship to time, atmosphere and perception.
Vincent van Gogh is born
Van Gogh is born in the Netherlands.
His mature work uses energetic marks and expressive colour. Landscapes, rooms and ordinary objects become ways to convey an intensely personal experience.
The Macchiaioli emerge
During the 1850s, artists in Tuscany develop the approach associated with the Macchiaioli.
Contrasting patches of light and colour help organise the image. Their work offers an Italian perspective on the search for a more direct relationship with visible reality.
The first Impressionist exhibition
An independent exhibition in Paris brings together artists including Monet, Degas and Renoir.
The exhibition creates space for approaches outside the official Salon. Contemporary subjects and experiments with light help reshape expectations of painting.
Van Gogh paints The Starry Night
Van Gogh paints The Starry Night while staying in Saint-Rémy.
The sky becomes a field of swirling movement above a quiet village. Observation and imagination meet in a composition whose colour and rhythm carry emotional force.
Towards abstraction
Beyond the visible
At the beginning of the twentieth century, artists question how an image should represent reality. Fragmented viewpoints and independent colour open new possibilities for painting.
Picasso paints Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
Picasso creates a painting that challenges conventional representation.
Angular forms and unsettled space disrupt familiar ways of depicting the figure. The work becomes a key reference in the development of Cubism.
Kandinsky moves towards abstraction
Around 1911, Kandinsky develops an increasingly abstract visual language.
Colour, line and rhythm take on roles beyond describing recognisable objects. Painting can invite an experience through relationships within the image itself.
