Of course what we do to make a living is important. But it's not necessarily art that will live an enduring mark on the world and whether pixel art will (or game art, most probably) that's a thing to leave to future historians.
Re: Ego-stroking, how it occurs. Just writing all these large texts about each other's work, it's really unsettling (at least it was to me to read the above text you wrote). Analysis can give way to ass-pats very easily.
NOTHING, literally NOTHING I've ever drawn deserves to be said to have a 'classical' (or neo-classical, which is what you're talking about) ambition. My trad skills are not there. It just makes me hold my head in my hands to read 'italian renaissance' and 'Lionheart on the Amiga' in the same sentence. As good as the pixel tech might be, the art in Lionheart looks like a freakin' saturday morning cartoon more than anything else (no disrespect and I love it for what it is, I would bet Henk Nieborg would agree).
I do not agree and do not think you should get away with making a connection between Hellenistic period (which is different from Ancient Greek Golden Century period) sculpture (is that what you have in mind?) and any sort of pixel art. It's just not there. I don't see it. Where are these pixel artists with their amazing anatomy and austere grace? Where is this 500 hour workmanship to finely chisel every last edge of every last facet? Nowhere. Even the most meticulous pixel artist will spend a fraction of the time on a piece of art that, pixel technique aside, has low culture aesthetics and proudly does so. You do not make a compelling case, so you shouldn't use 'neo/classical' or renaissance to describe pixel artists.
I was looking at this today
http://wtfarthistory.com/post/25851106717/truth-coming-out-of-her-wellHave you ever seen anything as striking and technically accomplished in any pixel art ever? Of course not. So, until someone pixels something of this caliber (and doesn't copy from a photo or already existing painting, lol), let's eat some humble pie and describe pixel art as what it is: fast, rough, pop-artish, modernist or post-modernist, computery, video-gamey, lowbrow and utilitarian, symbolic, retrofuturist, bright colourful nonsense at best or worst according to your vantage.
In any case, I don't want to be misunderstood. I am not against this discussion. I just find that the way it's been happening has been simultaneously too low ("phah! Demoscene! Wouldn't it look better as something else? Why is this even pixel art???" sorry to misquote to make it sound worse but that's how it sounded to me when I first read it) and toο faux high-brow, as I've explained. It'd take a real art historian or three to put things in their proper context and we don't have them at hand, but they might be out there, working on it.