It was the beginning of art as we experience it today
Shiner cites examples from a wide range of forms, including Shakespeare’s plays, Greek drama, Cellini’s sculptures and Michelangelo’s paintings. He also discusses Asian art, pointing out how “the Japanese language had no collective noun for `art’ in our sense until the nineteenth century”.
He establishes that the phrase “Chinese art” is also a relatively recent invention, since before the 19th century no one in China “grouped painting, sculpture, ceramics, and calligraphy together as objects” with something determinate in common.