Though certainly well-intended, this is the kind of "throughout history" question not allowed by our rules. They tend to produce, as you said yourself, TL;DR answers as opposed to the in-depth, informative responses that are this sub's standard. If there is a particular artist (or group of artists from a certain time/place) that you're interested in, I'd encourage you to submit another question!

Sorry, we don't allow throughout history questions. These tend to produce threads which are collections of trivia, not the in-depth discussions about a particular topic we're looking for. If you have a specific question about a historical event or period or person, please feel free to re-compose your question and submit it again. Alternatively, questions of this type can be directed to more appropriate subreddits, such as /r/history or /r/askhistory.