The dome of St Peter's is finished, completing nearly a century of construction on Europe's largest church

A performance in the Oratory in Rome, with music by Emilio de' Cavalieri, is in effect the first oratorio

Annibale Carracci completes an influential ceiling fresco in the Farnese palace in Rome

Claudio Monteverdi presents Orfeo, the first opera to win a lasting place in the international repertory

The Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens completes an altarpiece in Rome which is an early masterpiece of the baroque

Rubens returns from Italy to Antwerp, where he soon establishes Europe's most successful and prolific studio

The Teatro Farnese in Parma is the first to have a proscenium arch, framing perspective scenery painted on flat wings

The 19-year-old Flemish painter Anthony van Dyck is employed by Rubens in Antwerp as his chief assistant

The Dutch painter Frans Hals displays exceptional brilliance in his group portraits, including several of the civic guards of Haarlem

Bernini's youthful Pluto and Proserpina, suggesting soft flesh in cold marble, introduces the lively tradition of baroque sculpture

The Flemish painter Anthony van Dyck begins a five-year stay, and a successful career as a portrait painter, in Genoa

Diego Velazquez becomes court painter to the king of Spain - a post which he will hold for the remaining thirty-seven years of his life

Rubens completes a great narrative sequence of twenty-one paintings to celebrate the achievements of Marie de Médicis

The Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn develops a life-long interest in self-portraiture

The sculptor and architect Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini is given the task of adding the drama of baroque to the newly completed St Peter's in Rome

Rembrandt moves from his home town of Leiden to set up a studio in Amsterdam

Van Dyck moves to London and becomes portrait painter to the British court and aristocracy

Francesco Borromini begins work on his intricate baroque masterpiece, the Monastery of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (1634-43), in Rome

Rembrandt marries Saskia van Uylenburgh, who will feature in many of his paintings

A painted ceiling by Rubens, celebrating the Stuart dynasty, is installed in the Banqueting House in Whitehall

Jan Vermeer marries and begins a quiet career as a painter and art dealer in his home town of Delft

Diego Velazquez paints his only surviving female nude, The Toilet of Venus (known as the Rokeby Venus)

Velazquez, in Las Meninas, paints himself painting the king and queen of Spain

Louis XIV commissions a well-established team of designers to provide him with a spectacular palace and garden at Versailles

Bernini's great curving colonnade is completed, to form the piazza in front of St Peter's