Chronologically BCE—CE

Pre-historic 40,000 BCE—4,000 BCE:

Painting Cave Art


Egyptian 3,000 BCE—0:

Painting: Wall and Tomb Paintings

Sculpture: Akhenaton, Tutankhamen, The Sphinx

Architecture: Pyramids of Giza and Khufu

Literature: Book of the Dead

Drama: Heb-Seb ceremony


Ancient Greece 1,200 BCE—300 BCE

Painting: Philoxenos

Sculpture: Aphrodite of Melos, Laocoon Group, Praxiteles

Architecture: Parthenon, Theater of Epidaurus

Literature: Homer, Sappho

Drama: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Euripides, Menander


Roman 300 BCE—500 CE

Painting: Wall Painting in Pompeii

Sculpture: Column of Trajan, Arch of Constantine

Architecture: Pantheon, Colosseum, Roman Forum

Literature: Ovid, Virgil, Propertius

Drama: Plautus, Terence, Seneca


Early Middle Ages 500—1100 CE

Painting: Fan Kuan

Architecture: Hagia Sophia, San Vitale

Literature: Book of Kells, Li Ho, Tu Fu


Late Middle Ages 1100—1400 CE

Painting: Coppo, Cimabue, Giotto

Sculpture: Dancing Apsaras

Architecture: Chartres, Mont St. Michel, Notre Dame

Literature: Dante, Boccaccio, Chaucer


Early Renaissance 1400—1480 CE

Painting: Botticelli, Masaccio, Piero della Francesca

Sculpture: Agostino di Duccio, Donatello, Ghiberti

Architecture: Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Alberti

Music: Josquin des Pres, Jean Okeghem


High Renaissance 1480—1520 CE

Painting: Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Giorgione

Sculpture: Michelangelo

Architecture: San Gallo, Bramante

Literature: Rabelais

art (n.)
early 13c., "skill as a result of learning or practice," from Old French art (10c.), from Latin artem (nominative ars) "work of art; practical skill; a business, craft," from PIE *ar(ə)-ti- (source also of Sanskrit rtih "manner, mode;" Greek artizein "to prepare"), suffixed form of root *ar- "to fit together." Etymologically akin to Latin arma "weapons" (see arm (n.2)).
https://www.etymonline.com/word/art
“The expression or application of creative skill and imagination, especially through a visual medium such as painting or sculpture, also works produced in this way such as painting”. OED

What is the earliest known piece of visual art?

Please read:
Morriss-Kay GM. The evolution of human artistic creativity. J Anat. 2010 Feb;216(2):158-76. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-7580.2009.01160.x. Epub 2009 Nov 9. PMID: 19900185; PMCID: PMC2815939.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2815939/

Please also download, read, and listen at your leisure:
Ovid. Metamorphoses. Edited by Samuel Garth, Translated by John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison, and William Congreve (1717 Global Grey 2021). 
www.globalgreyebooks.com/metamorphoses-ebook.html
archive.org/details/metamorphoses_1006_librivox

History of the House of Tchou/Chu/Zhu [朱家史]
 
The character zhū pronounced in Anglo-American style English like the first part of the ‘j’ in ‘just’ followed by the ‘o’ sound in ‘oooooh’ [朱], at the least in Mandarin pronunciation of the 2000 CE era, claims a distinct place among the hundreds of clan, or as J. P. McDermott calls them in The Making of a New Rural Order in Southern China ‘lineage organization’, names in the culture that we routinely address as China.[1] We remain unclear as to the actual pronunciation when this script came to represent a certain group of people. Karlgren tried and probably still remains the best guess.
 
The best source for 朱 remains Speaking of the Language through Explaining the Script [說文解字]. This classic still remains a standard despite centuries of debate. Therefore it is a good source of reference. In this text, the script in question refers to wood of a particular type.[2] In the text Names of Hundreds of Clans [百家姓] the script takes position 13. The text also records that two members of this clan founded dynasties. 朱reigns as the only clan to found two dynasties in China that both began a new epoch in its history.
 
Both belonging to our common era (CE), the first dynasty belongs in the madness of the Medieval period, the so called Five Eras and Ten Kingdoms [五代十國].  In historiography of the period, the term ‘later’ [後] precedes the dynastic names so that they distinguish from previous dynasties of the same name. Writing as a likely descendant of the founder of the 'Later' Liang [後梁] (907 CE-923 CE), the use of the same script for dynastic names pays homage to the previous ruling class that inspired the new state. Therefore, the use of terms such ‘later’, ‘southern’, etc. requires revision for they result from the errors of anachronistic historians.
 
The New Liang Dynasty reigned 23 years. However, under the leadership of its founder Zhu Wen [朱溫] (907 CE-912 CE), with the posthumous name of Liang Taizu [梁太祖] or Liang the Great Ancestor. Liang created a new geopolitical climate that influenced a long multi-era period of restoring military and administrative control to the central authority.[3] This epoch restored order to the chaos and regionalization that resulted from the famous An Lushan Rebellion.[4] Though the Liang Dynasty in comparison with other dynasties seemed short lived, it changed the course of medieval history in Sina.

[1] See: W.K. Tchou, China and the Humanities: at the crossroads of the human and the humane, Common Ground Publishing, Urbana-Champaign, USA and Melbourne, AU, 2013. 

[2] http://www.zdic.net/z/1b/sw/6731.htm

[3] Chaffee, John W., and Denis Twitchett, eds. “Volume 5.” Series. In The Cambridge History of China, 5:i-i. The Cambridge History of China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

[4] Twitchett, Denis C., ed. The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 3. The Cambridge History of China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521214469.