I have not. My interests in history and in art have not so far intersected, although I am told I make an excellent guide to art museums. However, one wonderful book about political history which has something to say about art history (especially about the pivotal discovery of perspective) is Hans Baron, THE CRISIS OF THE EARLY ITALIAN RENAISSANCE. Perhaps you have read it already, if not I recommend it almost (almost) unreservedly. Baron may have overrated, as his critics pointed out, the novelty of the cultural trends he outlined; at least, my own quotation from Aquinas shows that the notions of civic and representative government existed long before the period he describes. But I have no doubt that the events he outlines were of genuine importance, and that especially when dealing with Florentine and Tuscan painting he has got hold of something important.
About the Founding Fathers, while I do not like the notion of history as unilinear progress, I am also a sworn enemy of relativism, moral equivalence, and the more extreme versions of multi-culturalism. While I would revise the position of the Founding Fathers in the kind of historical mythology I condemned, I nevertheless regard 1776 as a grand turning point in history, and in the right direction; a recovery, in fact, of the right path of Western civilization. I said more than once that I place the opening words of the Declaration of Independence only slightly below the Gospel, and anyone who wants to downgrade their importance will not find me to agree.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-12-09 06:25 pm (UTC)About the Founding Fathers, while I do not like the notion of history as unilinear progress, I am also a sworn enemy of relativism, moral equivalence, and the more extreme versions of multi-culturalism. While I would revise the position of the Founding Fathers in the kind of historical mythology I condemned, I nevertheless regard 1776 as a grand turning point in history, and in the right direction; a recovery, in fact, of the right path of Western civilization. I said more than once that I place the opening words of the Declaration of Independence only slightly below the Gospel, and anyone who wants to downgrade their importance will not find me to agree.