Smarthistory is one of the most-visited art history websites in the world. It offers a mix of essays and videos from knowledgeable contributors that will appeal to both novices and experts. The videos typically focus on a particular cultural location like a gallery or outdoor exhibition.

The subject matter covers all human history; the site is neatly categorized into sections such as Ancient Mediterranean, The Americas to 1900, and The Islamic World for easy navigation. There's also information that helps you appreciate art and appreciate museums in a new light. Example content includes articles about how to interpret surface and depth in paintings and how art galleries can shape a collective national identity.

The ThoughtCo Art History Guide offers a great mix of articles, many of which offer a more modern twist on what can be quite a dry subject matter for newcomers. Examples include "7 Things You Didn't Know About the Sistine Chapel", "7 Major Painting Styles: From Realism to Abstract", and "10 Most-Loved Paintings by Vincent Van Gogh".

There's also a vast number of more typical articles, covering everything from biographies to the stories behind famous works.

Art history news is a one-man blog that covers all the latest stories in the world of art history. The stories encompass everything from news about new exhibitions to information about some of the world's most famous historical artwork. The editor, Bendor Grosvenor, also offers a fair number of research and opinion pieces.

The site has been running since 2008 and has a vast back catalog for you to delve into. You can expect at least one new article per day.

The Museum With No Frontiers is the planet's largest online museum. It's a collaborative project between the E.U. and dozens of galleries and museums around the world. The site has three thematic sections: Discover Islamic Art, Discover Baroque Art, and Discover Carpet Art. For each section, you can explore the vast databases to learn about everything from architecture to pottery. Each section also has its own country-specific timeline.

Make sure you also check out the site's mini-galleries. They take a theme---like calligraphy, musical instruments, or funerary objects---and display works from around the globe. There are 37 mini-galleries to browse. You can even create your own customized collections of your favorite works and share them with other people.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is the largest art museum in the United States, but its website is a fantastic resource for people who are interested in the history of art. On the homepage, it's the Art tab which is worth your attention. Within the tab, you'll find a link to the museum's Timeline of Art History.

The timeline is a collection of essays, photographs of art, and chronologies from various periods in history. Each section has an overview, a list of key events, a scrollable timeline, and a huge number of associated images of paintings, artifacts, and other artwork. It's hard to get across quite how much information is available. You can filter the timeline by time period, geographic location, and artistic theme.

The Web Gallery of Art specializes in European fine arts. It covers time spanning from the 8th to the 19th centuries. Initially, the site's primary focus was the Renaissance period in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, but it later expanded to also include the Renaissance's early roots in medieval times along with the Renaissance style's transformation into Baroque and Rococo art in later years.

There are three primary ways to explore the site. You can use the list of artists (complete with filters), the local search engine, and the virtual tours. Virtual tours are a great way to learn about certain aspects of art history. You have 16 to choose from. Examples include Art in the Germanic countries between 1450 and 1550, Painting in the Low Countries (1400-1800), and The Art of Giotto.