History of Art

The earliest form of art are from the Paleolithic period. This is when humans hunted and gathered food. They would create cave paintings to tell stories about their hunts and what happened. Pictures of animals and humans can be seen on these cave walls. They used burned bones, charcoal or ground calcite mixed with animal fat to make paint. They would use a hollow bone as a tool for spraying paint. They would place paint inside and then blow through the bone. Cave people would place their hand onto the wall and then spray the paint onto their hand. This leaves the print of their hands on the wall.

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Then in the Neolithic period, people started to farm. They created cave paintings but with humans and animals shown living in harmony. They also used more advanced materials for craft such as jasper, quartz and amber. Later on it moved to the metal ages. Iron swords and spears were created and decorated with copper.


The pyramids of Egypt are another form of art made when the Egyptians were still around. These massive structures contain sculptures and shine made out of gold and other materials. The walls have writing and pictures drawn into them. They would create sculptures and statues to honour their Pharoah.

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Then came the Renaissance which was a very important time for Art. Famous artists from this era include Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and Raphael. People now understood anatomy much better because they were aloud to dissect donated bodies. Paintings became more realistic, perspective was added, soft shading (sfumato) and more natural backgrounds were used. Compared to medieval time painting where the more important people were bigger compared to the other people in the painting and perspective did not exist. The backgrounds were made up of man made objects and places. The people in the Medieval painting also had no emotion on their face and there was little use of shading and lighting.

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