He devised mathematical problems for his contemporaries to solve.
He was, in fact, for the best part of half a century the closest link between English artists and their French contemporaries.
Plutarch, like Shakespeare, wrote history as a guide for his contemporaries.
But that was a challenge for Picard and his contemporaries.
For Vigny and his contemporaries the age of glorious military valour is past.
He had no time for his own contemporaries.
For Masaccio's contemporaries it should have been easier to read this scene as a reflection of themselves and their own social realities.
For our contemporaries it is more a factor of inflation.
The skull was a symbol of melancholy for Shakespeare's contemporaries.
So, for him and his contemporaries the castle was still "new".