The division by periods and by styles is peculiar to European and Western art. The rhythm of the centuries quite corresponds to changes in the artistic period, even if, since the nineteenth century, styles and "isms" multiply in an exponential acceleration that leads to contemporaneity. Russia, "world apart" in the Middle Ages, is transformed from Peter the Great onwards, entering into a relationship with Western Europe. Before the eighteenth century there is a chapter on the colonial art of Latin America from the seventeenth to the eighteenth centuries. Colonialism has destroyed one world by exporting another, but the primigenial world reappears by mingling cultures. Europe gives names to mark the periods of its artistic evolution: Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque ... These names are born in various forms, often to criticize a phenomenon or a style and only later becoming an intangible reference. We invited Philippe Daverio to explain these metamorphoses. An unrepeatable panel of authors: the major art historians of various countries have been invited to write on single historical periods, heart of their respective studies.