It's not easy to find single events or dates that define a change of historical period, that don't happen overnight and uniformly globally. The arts were indeed more advanced.

But 1492 has a number of interesting events. It's the year that Spain got unified as the first modern state, with a centralized court. That's a crucial event to get over feudalism. Coincidentally it's the same year Columbus reached the Americas, so it's an event relevant to globalization.

Erasmus, also a central figure, was ordained that year.

Most of the textbooks use the definition of middle ages to be between the fall of the western Roman empire and the one of the eastern Roman empire