Saturday Art: The Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

Metropolitan Museum Collection. Model of King Sahure's Pyramid at Abusir

Model of Pharaoh Sahure’s Pyramid Complex at Abusir, Metropolitan Museum Collection. By Cornell University Library on Creative Commons at Flickr
Pharaoh Sahure was the Second pharaoh of the 5th Dynasty (2458-2446 BCE)

I recommend to all of you art enthusiasts the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. The site is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and it provides you with an interactive timeline of art history.

There are 300 timelines available to peruse at your leisure, so this is a great site to bookmark and periodically return to view.

Each timeline includes “representative works of art from the Museum’s collection, a chart of time periods, a historical overview, a list of key events, and related content.”

The site also presents 900 thematic essays that ” focus on specific themes in art history, including artistic movements and periods, archaeological sites, empires and civilizations, recurrent themes and concepts, media, and artists.” Each thematic essay includes links to related themes and timelines and often demonstrates the cross-fertilization of civilizations.”

You can examine and compare art from any of the ten geographical regions of the world during any of the time periods ranging from 8,000 BCE to the present. The regions are North America, Central America, South America, Africa, Europe, West Asia, Central and North Asia, East Asia, South and Southeast Asia, and Oceania. Just click on any icon exhibiting a small photo of a representative sample and it will enlarge to a splendid close-up photograph of the sample with “supporting material, including when available, links to technical glossaries on CAMEO and artist biographies from Oxford Art Online.” In all, there are 6,000 photographs available to examine.

You also will find a bibliography “comprised of over 3,000 Metropolitan Museum of Art publications” that is “further enriched by other publications whose primary focus is on Metropolitan Museum works of art.”

Cross Posted from my law blog.

4 Responses to Saturday Art: The Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

  1. ed nelson says:

    pretty good!, I like RokmNINov too, he is the king of all the little notes…. he actually invented a computorized type of system back in the day… cause no human could play it, not even the great Rocky with six inch wide hands.

    But for vocals, I like some like: Tommy makem, and so many others… Johnnie Cash, so many soo manny. not to get started…!

  2. masonblue says:

    If y’all like Flamenco guitar, here’s the incomparable Manitas de Plata performing Por el Camino de Ronda.

  3. masonblue says:

    You might also enjoy this impressive site, if you like space photos.

  4. masonblue says:

    If you click on the photograph of Pharaoh Sahure’s Mortuary Complex, take a look at the flat roof of the temple. You’ll see a large raised rectangular section of the roof supported at each of the four corners with openings along the sides.

    They designed and built roofs this way to permit light and ventilation into the interior of the buildings.

    You see the same design feature in the Temple at Karnak, which was constructed during the 18th Dynasty, approximately 1,000 years later.

    Sahure was the second pharaoh of the 5th Dynasty. The pyramids at Giza were constructed before his time during the 4th Dynasty. The 4th and 5th dynasties were during the fabled Old Kingdom.

    The 18th Dynasty began with the defeat and expulsion of the Hyksos from the Delta region and marked the beginning of the New Kingdom when Egypt created a vast empire in the Middle East through military conquest and diplomacy.

    Akhenaten, whom historians credit with creating the first monotheistic religion, was an 18th Dynasty pharaoh and the father of King Tut. Ramses, whose name y’all probably recognize, was a 19th Dynasty pharaoh.

    The Temple at Karnak is awesome and vast. Many pharaohs contributed to the project, including Hatshepsut, the first female pharaoh. The stone roof is supported by many stone columns that were painted to resemble papyrus trees so that the interior was like a vast forest of papyrus with indirect light coming through the slats created by the raised roof section.

    Students at UCLA have created an amazing virtual tour of the temple.

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