Disputed Statements

Mona Lisa, Works

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Year Created

Currently States 1503

Leonardo is generally agreed to have begun the portrait around 1503, but he continued reworking it over an extended and not precisely documented period, quite possibly continuing until close to his death in 1519, so no single completion year is settled among scholars.

Source Gardner's Art Through the Ages, Fred S. Kleiner (after Helen Gardner)

Mona Lisa, Works

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Commissioned By

Currently States Traditionally identified as Francesco del Giocondo, a Florentine silk merchant, commissioning a portrait of his wife Lisa Gherardini

Vasari's account names Francesco del Giocondo as the commissioning patron, but Leonardo never delivered the panel to any patron and kept it until his death, so some scholars question whether the tradition matches the surviving painting precisely.

Source Gardner's Art Through the Ages, Fred S. Kleiner (after Helen Gardner)

Muralism, Movements

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Start Year

Currently States 1920

Wikipedia states the muralist project began in the 1920s; not an exact year.

Source Wikipedia tier 2

Neoclassicism, Movements

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Start Year

Currently States 1750

Tate dates the movement's theoretical founding to about 1750, tied to Winckelmann's early writings in Rome; Britannica instead dates broad artistic uptake to the 1760s, after Winckelmann's 1764 History of Ancient Art. Both agree on Winckelmann's centrality and differ only on whether to date from theory or from uptake.

Source Tate

Neoclassicism, Movements

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns End Year

Currently States 1850

Neoclassicism had no sharp terminus; Britannica places its height in the 1780s and 1790s, lasting in weakened form until the 1840s and 1850s, while academic Neoclassicism persisted longer still.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

Northern Renaissance, Movements

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Start Year

Currently States 1490

Wikipedia states only that it began in most respects in the last years of the 15th century; not a precise year.

Source Wikipedia tier 2

Organic Architecture, Movements

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Founded In Place

Currently States United States; the source names no single founding place for the philosophy itself, only Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater house in rural Pennsylvania as its defining masterpiece.

The cited article credits Frank Lloyd Wright with the term and cites Fallingwater, in rural Pennsylvania, as the movement's defining work, but states no single place where the philosophy itself was founded, consistent with the entity's own description of it as a continuing set of principles rather than a period style with a fixed origin.

Source Wikipedia tier 2

Photography, Art Forms

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Place of Origin

Currently States France, generally credited to Nicephore Niepce and Louis Daguerre, though England's Henry Fox Talbot independently developed a rival photographic process around the same period.

Traditional attribution centers on the French daguerreotype process, formally unveiled in 1839; the recorded dissent names Talbot's independently developed calotype negative process, demonstrated in London with less publicity than the daguerreotype's formal unveiling.

Source Wikipedia tier 2

Pont du Gard, Works

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Construction Start Year

Currently States 40

Long credited to Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa around 19 BC; modern excavation evidence instead points to construction between 40 and 60 AD (Wikipedia, History section).

Source Pont du Gard (Wikipedia) tier 2

Pont du Gard, Works

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Commissioned By

Currently States Roman state; traditionally credited to Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, though modern dating disputes his direct involvement

Traditional attribution to Agrippa (c. 19 BC) is contested by excavation evidence dating construction to 40-60 AD (Wikipedia, History section).

Source Pont du Gard (Wikipedia) tier 2

Pop Art, Movements

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns End Year

Currently States 1975

No single closing event; TheArtStory dates Pop Art's decline to the late 1970s as the art world's attention shifted to installation, performance and other less object-based forms, and 1975 is used here as a round marker within that decade-long decline.

Source TheArtStory

Prairie School, Movements

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns End Year

Currently States 1917

1917, the year of American entry into the First World War, is commonly given as the point the movement effective momentum slowed, but some historians extend its active period into the 1920s through the continuing work of individual Prairie School architects.

Source Gardner's Art Through the Ages, Fred S. Kleiner (after Helen Gardner)

Primavera (Botticelli), Works

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Year Created

Currently States 1480

Dated to the late 1470s or early 1480s; exact year debated among art historians, datings vary.

Source Primavera (Botticelli) (Wikipedia)

Primavera (Botticelli), Works

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Commissioned By

Currently States Possibly a member of the Medici family (uncertain)

The certainty of its commission is unknown; a Medici family connection is suggested but not confirmed.

Source Primavera (Botticelli) (Wikipedia)

Realism, Movements

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Start Year

Currently States 1848

One position dates the movement to Champfleury's coining of the term and Courbet's earliest 1840s work, tied to the 1848 Revolution; Britannica instead dates the movement's actual emergence to Courbet's pivotal 1850-1851 Salon showing, treating the 1840s as precursor.

Source Tate

Realism, Movements

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns End Year

Currently States 1880

Realism has no sharp end date; it shaded gradually into Naturalism and Impressionism through the later nineteenth century rather than being displaced at a single point. TheArtStory's own timeline gives Started 1840s and Ended 1880s, and 1880 is used here as that round decade marker.

Source TheArtStory

Renaissance, Movements

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Start Year

Currently States 1400

Scholars place the Renaissance's opening anywhere from the early 1300s, with Giotto and Petrarch, to the conventional Florentine flowering around 1400 used here; there is no single agreed starting event.

Source Gardner's Art Through the Ages, Fred S. Kleiner (after Helen Gardner)

Renaissance, Movements

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns End Year

Currently States 1600

The Renaissance shades gradually into Mannerism and the early Baroque rather than ending on a fixed date; 1600 is a conventional marker for the close of the High Renaissance's influence in Italy, with Northern European Renaissance art continuing somewhat later.

Source Gardner's Art Through the Ages, Fred S. Kleiner (after Helen Gardner)

Rococo, Movements

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns End Year

Currently States 1785

France's Rococo was displaced by Neoclassicism after David's Oath of the Horatii at the 1785 Salon, but the style persisted longer in parts of Germany and Austria, so this date marks its French eclipse rather than a universal end.

Source Tate

Romanticism, Movements

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Start Year

Currently States 1800

Historians differ on whether musical Romanticism begins with Beethoven's middle and late works around 1800 to 1810 or only with the generation of composers, such as Schubert and Schumann, who came directly after him.

Source The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Stanley Sadie, editor (successive editions)