Geoffrey Chaucer and Dante Alighieri are noteworthy for their contributions to the growth of vernacular languages in Europe during the Middle Ages. Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales contributed to the spread of vernacular English in England and Dante’s Inferno (and other famous works) contributed to the spread of vernacular Italian in Italy. In both of these countries, and elsewhere in Europe, writing had usually been done in Latin, making it inaccessible for the vast majority of the population.

Wu Chengen is most famous for authoring Journey to the West. Wu lived during the Ming dynasty, but his most famous work is based on the travels of Xuanzang in the 600s CE. Xuanzang travelled to the Indian subcontinent and returned to China with a treasure trove of Buddhist writings and artefacts.

Europeans first began building stone castles in the twelfth century, as a result of their exposure to the Islamic stone castles they encountered during the Crusades. Prior to this, most castles in Europe were built of wood and were naturally much less effective. The introduction of stone castles contributed to the growth of the feudal system in Europe at this time, as castles allowed for lords to more effectively protect their lands.

Borobudur was built in Indonesia in the ninth century. It is one of the most famous Buddhist temples in the world.

Gothic architecture is defined by the desire of reaching towards the heavens. This drove builders to design taller structures, larger windows, delicate features, and thinner walls. All meant to glorify God. Romanesque architecture, on the other hand, represents an earlier movement with less technological advances that resulted in shorter, squatter buildings with thick walls and small windows. 

The Heian period of Japanese history, which began in the late-eighth century and ended in 1185, is considered to be the classical era of Japanese history. This period of Japanese history was relatively peaceful, prosperous, and culturally accomplished.

The use of steel and glass and the Prairie School style were all popular in the twentieth century. Chinoiserie became popular in the late eighteenth century, and the period from 1450-1750 saw a restored interest in Classic or Greco-Roman designs in Europe.

Historians have been able to pinpoint Italy as the birthplace of the Renaissance. It is important to note that at this time, Italy did not in fact exist as a nation – instead, the region which the modern world calls “Italy” today was then a collection of city-states, each independent from the others, but with a shared cultural, religious, and ethnic background. It was within these several city-states (including Venice, Milan, Naples, and Florence) in which the Renaissance first began to blossom sometime during the late medieval period, before later embarking on the long process of cultural, economic, and political transmission to the rest of Western Europe.

Above all other conditions, ample wealth was primarily and absolutely essential for any and all Renaissance-era patronage of the cultural arts. This wealth could be held in any variety of hands, from secular government officials to papal employees to members of the monarchy and nobility, but it had to be ample enough in quantity to allow for disposable spending. This ultimate condition of great monetary wealth was found, first and foremost, amongst the Italian city-states, all of whom enjoyed bustling economies, as well as the inter-classist competition and favorable governmental policies that made such a system possible. Florence, for example, had a well-established “grandi” or generationally wealthy class, as well as a newly-burgeoning nouveau-riche class, known as the “popolo grosso,” both of whom had a great deal of money to spare and an attendant desire to show off their power. These conditions created the system of patronage, by which wealthy citizens, officials, or other individuals financially sponsored painters, writers, highly skilled craftsman, sculptors, and architects, among others. These artists received the funds necessary to support themselves and their artistic endeavors, while their rich patrons gained bragging rights, high public visibility, and a sense of pride in having helped facilitate the creation of beauty.

The artwork of the Renaissance, as is especially demonstrated by the works of Michelangelo, Donatello, and Leonardo da Vinci, differs radically in both style and substance from medieval art. Much of the medieval era’s works of art took religious settings or themes as their central focus, so that the vast majority of these artists depicted their subjects in abstract ways, relying on standard styles and techniques that were passed down across the decades. But the Renaissance, with its emphasis on secular knowledge and classical themes, put an end to these sort of rigid religious depictions. Increasingly, Renaissance artists embraced this new cultural freedom and began to experiment with a wide variety of new techniques and subjects; many turned away from religious sources and began to look to the worlds of ancient Greek and Rome for inspiration. While of course it is impossible to codify all Renaissance era artwork according to the same exact set of standards, a great deal of commonality does exist. First and foremost, Renaissance artists developed a preference for realism – they looked to nature and the human form for inspiration, preferring to depict these subjects as realistically as possible, with deep emotions and detail made lovingly evident. Several new artistic techniques also emerged, including the use of mathematical principles by artists in order to ensure symmetry within their works. Connected to this trend was the development of linear perspective, or the depiction of objects within a work of art in differing degrees of size in order to create a realistic sense of distance or closeness to the viewer. Linear perspective allowed artists to render the natural world in much more realistic detail – now, mountains could be shown looming in the distance, while children frolicking in a meadow could be shown, with anatomical exactitude, close to the viewer’s position at the canvas’s foreground. Together, these developments, new focuses, and trends account for the great degree of prominence given to realistic, simplified scenes of nature and the human physical form in most Renaissance artworks.