The story of art

Introduction: On arts and artists

Strange beginnings : prehistoric and primitive peoples; Ancient America

Art for eternity : Egypt, Mesopotamia, Crete

The great awakening : Greece, seventh to fifth century BC

The realm of beauty : Greece and the Greek world, fourth century BC to first century AD

World conquerors : Romans, Buddhists, Jews and Christians, first to fourth century AD

A parting of ways : Rome and Byzantium, fifth to thirteenth century

Looking eastwards : Islam, China, second to thirteenth century

Western art in the melting pot : Europe, sixth to eleventh century

The church militant : the twelfth century

The church triumphant : the thirteenth century

Courtiers and burghers : the fourteenth century

The conquest of reality : the early fifteenth century

Tradition and innovation I : the later fifteenth century in Italy

Traditions and innovation II : the fifteenth century in the North

Harmony attained : Tuscany and Rome, early sixteenth century

Light and colour : Venice and northern Italy, early sixteenth century

The new learning spreads : Germany and the Netherlands, early sixteenth century

A crisis of art : Europe, later sixteenth century

Vision and visions : Catholic Europe, first half of the seventeenth century

The mirror of nature : Holland, seventeenth century

Power and glory I : Italy, later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

Power and glory II : France, Germany and Austria, late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries

The age of reason : England and France, eighteenth century

The break in tradition : England, America and France, late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries

Permanent revolution : The nineteenth century

In search of new standards : the late nineteenth century

Experimental art : the first half of the twentieth century

A story without end: The triumph of modernism ; Another turning of the tide ; The changing past.