The western tradition of music has its origins in the chant tradition of the early Christian era. The monophonic music of chant dominated the middle ages and included the composition of sequences and tropes. In the high Middle Ages, organum emerged, thus introducing polyphonic textures into liturgic...

Raphael's "School of Athens" is considered by many art historians to be the absolute masterpiece of the Renaissance. It is the perfect pictorial counterpart to the enormous changes in thinking that came about in the 1300s as a result of economic and technological developments. Its rational perspe...