1 June

Born in 1498 – Maarten van Heemskerck, Dutch painter.

Above: The Triumphal Procession of Bacchus, c. 1536-37

Also born on this date in 1932, American historian and critic Christopher Lasch.

In The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (published in 1979), Lasch wrote:

Today men seek the kind of approval that applauds not their actions but their personal attributes. They wish to be not so much esteemed as admired. They crave not fame but the glamour and excitement of celebrity. They want to be envied rather than respected. Pride and acquisitiveness, the sins of an ascendant capitalism, have given way to vanity.