The birth of art: Africa, Europe and the Near East in the stone age -- The rise of civilizations: the art of the ancient Near East -- Pharaohs and the afterlife: the art of ancient Egypt -- Minos and the heroes of Homer: the art of the prehistoric Aegean -- Gods, heoes and athletes: the art of ancient Greece -- Italy before the Romans: the art of the Etruscans -- From seven hills to three continents: the art of ancient Rome -- Pagans, Christians and Jews: the art of late antiquity -- Rome in the east: the art of Byzantium -- Muhammad and the Muslims: Islamic art -- Europe after the fall of Rome: early medieval art in the West -- The age of pilgrims and crusaders: Romanesque art -- The age of the great cathedrals: Gothic art -- From Gothic to Renaissance: the fourteenth century in Italy -- Of piety, passion and politics: fifteenth-century art in Northern Europe and Spain -- Humanism and the allure of antiquity: fifteenth-century Italian art -- Beauty, science and spirit in Italian art: the high Renaissance and mannerism -- The age of Reformation: sixteenth-century art in Northern Europe and Spain -- Of popes, peasants, monarchs and merchants: Baroque and Rococo art -- The Enlightenment and its legacy: neoclassicism through the mid-nineteenth century -- The rise of modernism: the later nineteenth century -- The triumph of modernist art: the early twentieth century -- The emergence of postmodernism: the later twentieth century.