Will Asia ever match the cultural magnificence of Europe?

It is all very well saying Asia is replacing Europe as the prime creator of wealth, but is there any evidence that new superpowers like China and India will be able to supply the cultural magnificence which once accompanied European productivity? We take European art for granted. But its profusion and variety, and the thoroughness of its penetration into every aspect of life, are unequalled. I have been repeatedly to the new medieval and Renaissance galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum since they opened. Many wonderful artefacts never before seen, or at any rate never properly displayed, are now on view in all their opulence. They overflow with objects which testify sometimes to the genius but always to the ingenuity, invention, skill and taste of the craftsmen who created them. What remarkable creatures Europeans were before they committed collective suicide in the two world wars of the 20th century, just as the ancient Greeks destroyed themselves in the Peloponnesian disaster.

One is struck by the sheer density of the achievement. If we look at what emerged in the second decade of the 16th century alone, the mind is overwhelmed by the abundance. Of course the years are dominated by Raphael’s cartoons, which pulse with the almost frantic energy of the High Renaissance. But we forget that these paintings were themselves merely the preliminaries to the exquisite tapestries woven in Brussels, and now displayed in the Vatican Museum. While Raphael was working on his cartoons, Dürer was engraving his magisterial portrait of Erasmus, shown at his writing desk in all the stunning detail of his crowded study, and Lucas Cranach was likewise engraving on copperplate his bold head of Luther, radiating raw-boned defiance and terrifying determination. The V&A has superb examples of both.