Includes bibliographical references and index.

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.