TIP OF THE SPEAR

Perseus, Hercules, and the Goddess of Modern Virtue

If you’ve wondered whether the statue of the black woman staring at her cell phone in the majestic Piazza della Signoria in Florence is fake—an AI creation—meant to annoy, then you’re correct. Its purpose is to annoy you. But I can confirm, it’s real, and it’s sad. But take heart! There’s every reason to be optimistic. Read on.

BY DOC SPEARS

Art history is history. And there’s no better place to appreciate that than Florence, Italy.

History can be divided into three major periods: antiquity, the medieval, and modernity. Florence is the center of the magnificence that was the Renaissance, and the city’s history is that of the birth of the modernity you live in. At the core of this explosion of art and science was the Medici family. They were the world’s bankers, wealthy in a magnitude beyond compare to even today’s mega-billionaires. No, they weren’t proto-Jeffersonian republicans, but along with the bad of their oligarchy came a lot of good for their citizens, and they planted the seeds for the flowering of Western civilization.