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Duccio di Buoninsegna, Madonna and Child

Simone Martini, The Angel of the Annunciation

A Gothic rose window: the cathedral glass through which the Middle Ages looked at light.

Lapis lazuli, ground into ultramarine: a blue prized as highly as gold.

Dividers: the Renaissance measured the world and found perspective.

An armillary sphere: the heavens in brass rings.

A flamed tulip: in Holland in 1637 a single bulb could fetch the price of a house.A candle: light and darkness, the Baroque's favourite colours.

A painted fan: the constant companion of an eighteenth-century lady.A shell, rocaille in French: the style took its name from it.

Antonio Canova, «Perseus with the Head of Medusa»An Ionic capital: Neoclassicism brought the orders of antiquity back into fashion.A laurel wreath: the hero's crown, and Napoleon's at his coronation.

The moon: no one gazed at it longer than the Romantics.A quill: the age of Byron and Pushkin.

A sheaf of wheat: the Realists painted labour as it was.A daguerreotype camera, 1839: photography taught painting to look anew.

Edgar Degas, «Little Dancer Aged Fourteen»Paint in a tube, patented in 1841: without it the Impressionists would hardly have gone out of doors.A parasol: for the light it was all about.