Pt. 1. Continuity and transformation: what is art?
Art as the offspring of religion
Toward the classical Athenian moment
Beyond the borders of classical Greek art
The birth of the new: Hellenistic art
Hellenistic, Etruscan, and early Roman art
Early Christian art and its progeny
The beginnings of Jewish art
Christian medieval art and architecture
The language of Romanesque and Gothic art.
Pt. 2. Islamic art from abstract to figurative
Jewish medieval art and architecture
Early Renaissance painting in central Italy
15th century Italian Renaissance painting
Renaissance painting beyond the Alps
Renaissance sculpture: toward Florence
High Renaissance in central Italy
The rebirth of classical dynamism
16th century Northern European painting
Transformation of people, objects, ideas.
Pt. 3. The Reformation and the Mannerist crisis
Baroque shadows: Venice to Madrid to Rome
Shadow and light from Rome to the lowlands
Northern landscapes and life sweeps
The counter-Reformation from Italy outward
Revolutions in Spanish and English painting
France's gold and silver ages
From realism to impressionism
American romantic realism and its progeny
Fin de Siècle European art movements.
Pt. 4. Asia and Africa in the Western mind
Revolutions in early 20th century painting
Figuration and abstraction: the struggle
Developments in sculpture: Rodin to Judd
New worlds of architecture: Wright to Hadid
The edges of West and East
Art, trauma, and politics
Defining modern Jewish art
The problem of categories in modern art
The explosion of modernist media
Art, politics, and religion from era to era.
