Janice

John Ruskin: The Adopted Venetian

Nineteenth-century England, the world from which John Ruskin hailed, had a well-developed community of artists and critics well before Ruskin began writing. The Dulwich, the first public art gallery in England, and The National Gallery of Art both opened within ten years of Ruskin’s birth in 1819. While the Royal Academy was declining in popularity, demand for new exhibition spaces resulted in the creation of the Society of British Artists and the New Society of Painters in Water-Colours. As the number of artists and the level of talent in Britain grew, the buying and selling of works also increased. Critics of the day considered England to be “the most vital center of European art,” while modern critics have referred to the Victorian era as “the golden age of English art.”[1] With the growth of British art, the critical community in England also grew and developed. By the time Ruskin published his first work in 1836, critics had already been discussing many of the themes that Ruskin focused on in his work. For instance, the superiority of the Gothic was an idea already well established when Ruskin began writing, with the Houses of Parliament having been rebuilt in the Gothic style in the 1830s. Furthermore, the relationship between an artist, his morality, and his work had been extensively discussed, many critics having decided that virtue was imperative to the creation of truly good art.[2] While much of the basis for Ruskin’s ideas was not new, he was one of the first to present these ideas in such a detailed and well-developed manner. For this reason, Ruskin can be considered one of the most important writers of the nineteenth century, as well as the preeminent critic on Venetian architecture.

With the revolutionizing of the British artistic community came a new view of other cultures, particularly that of Venice. From the Middle Ages through the Renaissance, the English tended to associate Venice with wealth, power, and prosperity. By the seventeenth century, this view had radically changed, as Venice no longer served as an international power and economic depression was plaguing all of Italy. While the English still admired Venice for its beauty, they felt the city was in decline. This period marks the beginning of the longstanding belief that the moral degradation of Venetian citizens had led to their city’s decline, an idea which culminates in Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice two centuries later.[3]

As evident in Ruskin’s work, many of the English still regarded Venice as a fallen empire, but this sentiment had become mixed with a sense of admiration and romanticism. The writings of Lord Byron and his contemporaries, along with paintings by Canaletto, J.M.W. Turner, Samuel Prout, and others, shaped this romanticized image of Venice held by most Englishmen in the early nineteenth century. It was with this vision that Ruskin first encountered Venice in 1835, marking the beginning of Ruskin’s love affair with the city, as well as the radical shift in the way that Ruskin viewed both Venice and his native England. His thorough studies of Byzantine and Gothic architecture and Venetian painters, such as Tintoretto, led him to reject the romantic, Byronic view of the city. He came to see two sides of Venice: its former state and its current state, “one ideal and ancient, the other modern and ruinous,” a realization that resulted in several of Ruskin’s major works, including Modern Painters, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, and The Stones of Venice.[4]

Though Ruskin is best known in the art world for his architectural studies, he repeatedly returned to the topics of drawing and painting throughout his career, and was even an artist himself. His five-volume Modern Painters, written over the course of seventeen years during the early part of Ruskin’s career, provides one of the most important modern works of art criticism, as well as an insight into how his ideas were developing over time. There are several major themes present in each of these five volumes, but, as each volume was written separately, Ruskin’s ideas clearly change from the first to the fifth volume, suggesting that the writer’s ideas were undergoing constant reevaluation throughout his career.[5] The first volume of Modern Painters originally carried the subtitle “Their Superiority on the Art of Landscape Painting to all the Ancient Masters, proved by example of The True, The Beautiful and the Intellectual, from the Works of Modern Artists, especially those of J.M.W. Turner, Esq., R.A.,” revealing the original purpose of the work: to argue the superiority of Turner.[6]

The Sun of Venice: Going to Sea, done by Turner in 1843, is one of the artist’s many paintings analyzed by Ruskin. First, he praises the accurate portrayal of the brightly painted sail of the boat, a common sight in Venice, but one that he feels other artists rarely portray. Secondly, he praises the way that Turner paints the water’s surface, saying that “no man had ever painted the surface of calm water but Turner.”[7] Here, Turner has no reflections from nearby buildings to assist him in depicting the surface, but must rely on line and color. In Ruskin’s opinion, Turner’s ability to do this is one of the skills that sets him apart from other painters of Venice, such as Canaletto. In contrast to Turner’s sense of movement across the water’s surface, Canaletto “almost always covers the whole space of it with one monotonous ripple.”[8] This technique is seen in Canaletto’s The Rialto Bridge, painted between 1735 and 1740, where the artist paints geometrically identical ripples across the whole surface of the water. Furthermore, he paints neat, clear reflections of the buildings, as if they were on a “quiet lake” rather than the busy Grand Canal.[9] Looking at The Sun of Venice: Going to Sea, as well as Turner’s own The Rialto, done between 1820 and 1821, it is clear that Turner’s surface possesses a much more realistic sense of movement and reflection, as one would see in a modern city, turning away from the calm, idealized version of Venice seen in Canaletto.

As the first volume of Modern Painters grew into four later volumes, Ruskin widened his focus, creating a monumental treatise on art during modern times, as well a thorough investigation of the connection between art, humanity, God, and nature. Throughout, he repeatedly returns to the subject of Venice, as seen through his own observations and those of painters of Venice. In his studies of Venetian painters, including Tintoretto and Titian, he concludes that they are superior. Ruskin also argues the idea that art serves as “an index to the moral health of the society” that created it.[10] It is in the fifth volume of Modern Painters that Ruskin bemoans the current state of Venice:

I know not how far in humility, or how far in bitter and hopeless levity, the great Venetians gave their art to be blasted by the sea-winds or wasted by the worm. I know not whether in sorrowful disobedience, or in wanton compliance, they fostered the folly, and enriched the luxury of their age. This only I know, that in proportion to the greatness of their power was the shame of its desecration and the suddenness of its fall. The enchanter’s spell, woven by centuries of toil, was broken in the weakness of a moment; and swiftly, and utterly, as a rainbow vanishes, the radiance and the strength faded from the wings of the Lion.[11]

Here, it is apparent that Ruskin, while still fascinated with Venice, has been thoroughly disillusioned by its current state. Although he is unable to determine what role art played in this downfall, he does suggest that art has served as a reflection of it. In his major discourse on architecture, The Stones of Venice, as well as in the work leading up to it, The Seven Lamps of Architecture¸ he repeatedly returns to the idea that a society’s degeneration is visible in its art and architecture.

By 1849, Ruskin’s focus had turned to architecture, and he adapted many of his ideas about painting in order to apply them to this field. However, it is important to note here that Ruskin wrote his two major works of architecture before he finished the last three volumes of Modern Painters, in 1856 and 1860, respectively. Ruskin did not simply abandon painting to discuss architecture, but rather expanded his arguments to include both fields. In fact, in an 1852 letter to his father, Ruskin said that the third volume of The Stones of Venice served as “an introduction to the last of Modern Painters,” signifying that Ruskin in no way abandoned his previous study.[12] His work on architecture began in 1839 with the release of The Poetry of Architecture, but this work received little attention. It was ten years later with the release of The Seven Lamps of Architecture that Ruskin really began to emerge as a leading architectural writer, a position that he firmly established over the next five years as he released each of his three volumes of The Stones of Venice.

The Seven Lamps of Architecture, a book-length essay containing fourteen of Ruskin’s own sketches, lays out his seven major principles, or “lamps,” of architecture: Sacrifice, Truth, Power, Beauty, Life, Memory, and Obedience. While he does not specifically focus on Venice in this book, he develops the theories and ideas that he later applies to the architecture of Venice in The Stones of Venice. The most important premise of this book is the idea, already seen in Modern Painters, that architecture is closely related to the moral state of a nation or city, be it England, Venice, or elsewhere. By doing this, Ruskin established architecture as not only an aesthetic presence, but also a political and “moral presence in the life of the average Victorian.”[13] For instance, “The Lamp of Sacrifice” is based on the premise that architecture, most specifically churches, should serve as proof of the society’s obedience and dedication to God. He takes this idea further in “The Lamp of Truth,” arguing for an “honest architecture,” one in which there is no deceit in its construction. These forms of deceit include the painting of surfaces to appear like another surface, machine-made ornaments, and the illusion of some other form of support than what actually exists.[14] The honesty of ornament was particularly important to Ruskin because he considered it the distinguishing factor between architecture and simple building. Ruskin further develops the ideas of truth in the following chapters, arguing that architecture should not only be honest but also a reflection of the society that produced it. For example, in “The Lamp of Memory,” he examines the relationship between a building and its history, reaching the conclusion that restoration “is a lie from beginning to end” because it destroys the original structure and attempts to place a work of the “cheapest and basest imitation” in its place, as he felt had been done to St. Mark’s.[15] Throughout each of the chapters, he consistently maintains that the Gothic style is the greatest form because it, as any noble form of architecture, is “in some sort the embodiment of the Polity, Life, History, and Religious Faith of nations.”[16] By detailing his views on what architecture should and should not be, Ruskin lays an excellent foundation for The Stones of Venice, in which he takes principles from The Seven Lamps of Architecture and applies them to specific structures in Venice.

John Ruskin released each of the three volumes of The Stones of Venice over a two-year period from 1851 to 1853. The first volume, “The Foundations,” is an architectural treatise that specifies the rules of architecture. For this reason it has been compared with Alberti’s De Re Aedificatoria of 1452 because both treatises approach architecture as a combination of both construction and decoration.[17] With the exception of the first chapter, “The Quarry,” this volume deals very little with the actual city of Venice, but rather continues Ruskin’s work in The Seven Lamps of Architecture by analyzing specific architectural details and concluding whether or not they are in accordance with the principles laid out in his previous work.

In contrast to the first volume of The Stones of Venice, the second and third volumes deal with specific structures in the city of Venice. The second volume is subtitled “The Sea Stories,” a reference to the lowest story of a Venetian building, called the sea story. This volume looks specifically at Byzantine and Gothic architecture within the city, while clearly privileging these styles above the Venetian Renaissance that he discusses in the third volume, “The Fall.” Throughout each volume, Ruskin discusses both specific buildings, such as St. Mark’s and the Ducal Palace, and the stylistic evolution of numerous architectural features, including column bases, capitals, cornices, windows, and, most notably, arches. His studies of arches provide not only an example of the types of arches found around Venice, but also a “scheme for the development of the mature Gothic style,” as his chronology of stylistic progression focused mainly on this period.[18]

Ruskin first begins his analysis of arches in “The Foundations” with three chapters devoted to his discussion of both the technical aspects of constructing an arch and a brief overview of the basic styles of arches throughout Italy and the rest of Europe. Here, beyond simply describing the arch as a functional element necessary for the support of a building, he gives the arch a moral element by creating a metaphor  between an arch and man’s character. The arch line, or curved shape of the arch, serves as its moral character, with the forces of gravity and weight from above being temptations for the arch to stray from its intended function. To protect the arch from these temptations, the voussoirs, or the particular stones of the arch, act as its protection against ruin. The connection between man and arch is as follows: “if either arch or man expose themselves to their special temptations or adverse forces, outside of the voussoirs or proper and appointed armor, both will fall.”[19] By personifying the arch in this manner, Ruskin shows the reader a specific instance in which architecture serves as a moral force within Venice, or any other city. Once he informs the reader of the importance of a morally sound arch, he then describes the techniques required to construct such an arch, focusing mainly on the placement of masonry and proper distribution of weight above the arch. Throughout, he consistently privileges the Venetian Gothic over other forms of arches, praising its simple construction and exceptional weight distribution, and eventually concluding that “nothing can possibly be better or more graceful” than a well-constructed Venetian Gothic arch.[20] He further expands on his love for this style in “The Sea Stories,” providing a thorough survey of the arch’s evolution over time.

In this volume, Ruskin describes the development of Byzantine architecture, followed by the shift to the Gothic style and its subsequent development, focusing on the stylistic changes that took place in arches and other elements as demonstrated on Venetian buildings. He chooses to focus on arches over windows and doorways as evidence for his argument because he considers them the “most distinctly traceable” elements of a building.[21] Interestingly, he points out that the Gothic reached Venice after it was already established on the mainland, meaning that Venice embraced the Byzantine far longer than other places in Italy. According to Ruskin, this signifies that the emergence of the Gothic in Venice was not a matter of architectural innovation, but rather a struggle between earlier conventions and a more contemporary style, equating early Gothic structures in the city to a prisoner “entangled among the enemy’s forces, and maintaining their ground till their friends came up to sustain them.”[22] He illustrates this idea by chronicling the gradual changes to arches that occurred early in the shift towards the Gothic during the twelfth century, followed by later, more radical changes in the fifteenth century.

Ruskin’s diagram, “The Orders of Venetian Arches,” exemplifies each of these changes that occurred. The diagram shows the six orders of Venetian windows that he developed, with the two bottom rows being successive styles of arched doorways. The first group shows a typical Byzantine arch, as can be seen at Palazzo Loredan and its neighbor Palazzo Farsetti, two early thirteenth century palaces located on the Grand Canal. A first order arch consists of a plain rounded arch, similar to Roman arches from antiquity. The second order has a point on the extrados, or outer edge, of the arch, with the intrados, or inner edge, still rounded. This order can be seen in another early thirteenth century structure on the Grand Canal, the Ca’ da Mosto. Moving into the third order, both the extrados and intrados are pointed, like in the early fifteenth century window arches at Palazzo Zorzi-Bon at San Severo. While the second and third orders represent the transitional styles moving towards the full Gothic, the fourth and fifth are purely Gothic, as well as the styles that lasted the longest, beginning in the thirteenth century and ending in the fifteenth. The fourth order is pointed like the third, but instead of straight moldings, they have a trefoil-like shape. The fifth order is similar, but has a straight molding with the trefoil shape placed inside of the arch. Both these orders can be seen on the main rows of windows on the Ca d’Oro, a palace designed by Giovanni and Bartolomeo Bon between 1428 and 1430. The windows of the lower arcade are of the fourth order, while those of the upper arcade are of the fifth. As expected, Ruskin considers the fourth and fifth orders, those most Gothic in nature, to be the best, as “the root of all that is greatest in Christian art is struck in the thirteenth century.”[23] Ruskin’s sixth and final order represents the late Gothic arch, present before architecture began to shift towards the Renaissance style. This order is basically the same as the fifth order, except with the addition of a finial above the point of the arch, as seen in Ruskin’s 1851 drawing “Decoration by Disks: Palazzo dei Badoari Partecipazzi,” found in the first volumes of The Stones of Venice. Though he presents these orders as if they succeed each other in neat, chronological fashion, this is certainly not the case. Each order overlaps with the others and several orders may exist on the same façade, as seen in the examples discussed here.[24] Still, Ruskin’s classification provides a wonderful summation of the trajectory that Gothic architecture was following prior to its shift into the Renaissance.

By “The Fall,” the third volume of The Stones of Venice, Ruskin has little to say about the specifics of arches in architecture. This is likely because arches no longer possessed the variety they had during the Gothic period. Arches were generally plain Byzantine or Roman-style arches, the other five orders having fallen out of style. Still, he devotes this entire volume of The Stones of Venice to his discussion of Renaissance architecture, much of which is marked by a general distaste for the period as a whole. This is not to say that he disliked every Renaissance structure in Venice, for he greatly praise several of them, but he did feel that the era’s architecture grew progressively worse through each of the three stages within the Renaissance that he identified. The first stage, the Early Renaissance, was the “first corruptions introduced to the Gothic schools,” including the incorporation of precise symmetry, plain, undecorated stone, and a general feeling of academic coldness. However, he did praise this stage for its return to the earlier Byzantine elements of design and color, as seen in late fifteenth century buildings like the Palazzo Manzoni and the Scuola di San Marco.[25] However, by the time of the Roman Renaissance, the second stage, he saw that architecture had returned to the conventions of ancient Rome, but with none of its original vitality or innovation. Though he greatly praises the Palazzo Grimani, a 1575 structure by Michele Sanmicheli, for its delicate decoration and the majesty that it imparts to the Rialto, even calling it one of the greatest Renaissance palaces in Europe, his general sentiment about this period is that it is dull and unimaginative, regardless of its so-called perfection. He completely omits any mention of Jacopo Sansovino’s Loggetta from this book and he describes Palladio, at the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, as having “pierced his pediment with a circular cavity, merely because he had not wit enough to fill it with sculpture.”[26] Ruskin best sums up his feelings about the Roman Renaissance when he says, “It revisits the places through which it had passed in the morning light, but it is now with wearied limbs and under the gloomy shadows of evening,” suggesting that architecture that was once vibrant and imaginative has now been made tired and unoriginal.[27]

If Ruskin seems unimpressed with Early and High Renaissance styles, he is thoroughly disgusted by the third stage, “The Grotesque Renaissance,” his term for what is today know as the Baroque. Here, he feels architecture has lost all of the moral character he had described so eloquently in his earlier discussions on arches, and has instead been turned into the “perpetuation in stone of the ribaldries of drunkenness” and self-indulgence.[28] This stage receives its name from the incorporation of grotesque elements, or distorted and ugly faces and bodies, often with protruding tongues, displayed on buildings and bridges. Ruskin makes a point to distinguish this “false grotesque” from the previous “true” version seen in the Gothic period, with the use of gargoyles and other distorted figures. He illustrates each of these versions in his drawing “Noble and Ignoble Grotesque,” found in the third volume of The Stones of Venice. In contrast to the earlier type, ignoble grotesque is an example of human imagination run amuck, as it steps out of the bounds of stable, organized renderings into images of the basest forms of debauchery and instability.[29] In “The Grotesque Renaissance,“ The Church of Santa Maria Formosa receives the brunt of Ruskin’s scorn. The church was originally built in 1492 by Mauro Codussi, but one of its facades was redone by an unknown architect in 1604 in the Baroque style. It was the location of numerous grotesque elements, as well as being completely barren of any form of legitimate religious decoration, in Ruskin’s opinion. The worst feature, according to Ruskin, is one of the heads, “leering in bestial degradation,” from the façade of the church. As offensive as he finds this head, he feels it is appropriate for this period because it serves as an incarnation of the degradation that resulted in the city’s decline, thereby allowing the viewer to “know what pestilence it was that came and breathed upon her beauty.”[30]

While Ruskin discusses numerous buildings that exemplify each of the three major styles in Venice, Byzantine, Gothic, and Renaissance, his discussion of the Ducal Palace is particularly interesting because it was built over several centuries and incorporates elements of each of the three styles. Ruskin uses the Ducal Palace as not only an example of each of the styles he had discussed, but also as an allegory to the history of the city itself. An 1852 letter to his father reads, “The whole book will be a kind of ‘moral of the Ducal Palace of Venice…’ I shall give a scattered description of a moulding here and an arch there- but they will all be mere notes to the account of the rise and fall of Venice.”[31] Clearly, Ruskin did more than simply give a description of “a moulding here and an arch there” prior to his study of the Palace, but throughout the first and second volume, he repeatedly mentions its architectural integrity and slowly works his way up to his full analysis of the structure in the final chapter of “The Sea Stories.”

The Ducal Palace, “the central building of the world,” was rebuilt by a variety of architects during each of the three periods that Ruskin discusses.[32] Unfortunately, the Byzantine palace was almost entirely destroyed and built over when the Gothic palace was constructed. While some of the Gothic palace was built over, much of it now exists in combination with the Renaissance palace. The original Ducal Palace is believed to have been built in the early ninth century, coinciding with the time that the Venetian Republic was developing as a world power. For this reason, Ruskin considers the modern day Ducal Palace to be one of the last remnants of the city’s former glory.[33] The structure was heavily damaged by fire on two different occasions, and little is written about its original state, making it difficult to ascertain exactly how the building looked. However, Ruskin does say that the building was richly decorated with gold, sculpture, and marble, and possessed many features similar to those seen at other great Byzantine structures around the city, such as the Fondaco dei Turchi, built in the early thirteenth century by Giacomo Palmier.[34] The structure remained this way until the Gothic palace replaced it in the early fourteenth century. Ruskin points out that while the Byzantine palace coincided with the foundation of the Venetian Republic, the Gothic palace coincided with the beginning of aristocratic rule in Venice. The building was expanded to house the Great Council chamber, the Ducal apartments, and a series of rooms that served as prisons until the late eighteenth century. As one would imagine, he considers this stage of the palace’s construction the greatest, even calling the Gothic Ducal Palace “the Parthenon of Venice.”[35] However, during the fifteenth century, sections of the building were redone in the Renaissance style, beginning with the destruction of the last remnants of the Byzantine palace and the building of a new façade facing the Piazzetta. Today, the Piazzetta façade, along with the Rio Façade and the Sea Façade, represent the changes that occurred to the building, with the Sea Façade being the most Gothic and the Rio Façade being a prime example of early Renaissance architecture. Although Ruskin does not find the Renaissance elements at the Ducal Palace overly offensive, he does comment on their reflection of the changing religious environment in Venice at the time. He criticizes the shift away from sculptural scenes of Christ’s life, like those found at St. Mark’s, towards images of human virtues and literary references, noting that they changed “exactly in proportion as the Christian religion became less vital…and gradually, as the thoughts of men were withdrawn from their Redeemer, and fixed upon themselves,” yet another form of the self-indulgence that would contribute to the city’s fall.[36]

This form of social commentary is prevalent throughout Ruskin’s work. While he is credited with spreading the popularity of Venetian architecture to the rest of Europe, he did not simply write The Stones of Venice to serve as an architectural guide to the city of Venice.[37] But beyond his major influence on architecture and criticism, he is perhaps best known for the political and social undertones in his early work, despite their seeming focus on art and architecture. The majority of his work from the last thirty years of his life focused directly on politics and social history, making it seem, on the surface, as if he shifted gears in the middle of his career. However, this is certainly not true, he simply withdrew from using art as a means through which to communicate his ideas. In The Stones of Venice, Ruskin repeatedly raises questions about the relationship between art and society, and often relates the case of Venice to his native England, having written the book as an “awful warning to contemporary England.”[38] The opening chapter of The Stones of Venice begins with a homily on the importance of learning from the history of previous fallen empires, with Tyre and Venice as his examples, concluding that if England forgets the example of their predecessors they may be subject to ruin of an equal or greater degree.[39] This was not a particularly new idea at the time: Byron and others had touched on this idea earlier, but Ruskin was certainly the first to argue the point in such detail and with such intensity. He was also one of the first to develop fully the idea that a society’s morality could be discerned by studying their art and architecture. Despite his development of these ideas, his arguments often appear convoluted to the reader, resulting in mediocre or confused receptions that he received from his some of his contemporaries. For this reason, Ruskin considered The Stones of Venice to be a failure, for he was utterly disgusted that his third volume received the most attention while the earlier two were largely ignored when they were published, though they have since been thoroughly studied.[40] Still, the work brought him much acclaim from those who were able both to press through to its end and understand what they had read, resulting in the enormous influence the book has had since its publication and marking the transition from his art-based criticism into political, economic, and social criticism.

By the time of Ruskin’s death in 1900, he had been plagued by a mysterious mental illness for much of his life and had hardly been able to communicate in any coherent manner for the ten years prior to his death. His last published work was his autobiography written in 1889, Praeterita, which is surprisingly articulate considering his severely deteriorated mental state at the time. By that time, he had taken eleven trips to Venice and had long considered himself an adopted son of city. In Modern Painters, when discussing the virtues of Venice in relation to those of Florence, he writes, “We Venetians also, must be able to use our swords, and on ground which is none of the steadiest.”[41] By investigating the architecture of the city and holding up its past as an ideal for the future, Ruskin was able to radically change the typical, Byronic view of Venice that his fellow Englishmen possessed, trading it for a glimpse into the depths of one of the most unique cities in the world while still warning the British public of the future downfall it must avoid.

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[1] Wendell V. Harris, “Ruskin’s Theoretic Practicality and the Royal Academy’s Aesthetic Idealism,” Nineteenth-Century Literature 52, no. 1 (June 1997): 81-82, http://www.jstor.org (accessed September 27, 2008).

[2] Ibid., 84.

[3] Jeanne Clegg, Ruskin and Venice (London: Junction Books, 1981), 17.

[4] Ibid., 2.

[5] Clark, 132.

[6] Clegg, 45.

[7] John Ruskin, Modern Painters¸ edited and abridged by David Barrie (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1987), 148.

[8] Ibid., 144.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Harris, 90.

[11] Ruskin, Modern Painters, 543.

[12] John Lewis Bradley, ed., Ruskin’s Letters from Venice: 1851-1852 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955), 192.

[13] John Batchelor, John Ruskin: A Life (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2000), 76.

[14] John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, Vol. 1 of The Complete Works of John Ruskin (New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell & Co., 1905), 32.

[15] Ibid., 180.

[16] Ibid., 184.

[17] Cornelis J. Baljon, “Interpreting Ruskin: The Argument of The Seven Lamps of Architecture and The Stones of Venice,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 55, no. 4 (Fall 1997): 406, http://web.ebscohost. com (accessed September 14, 2008).

[18] Deborah Howard, The Architectural History of Venice (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 98.

[19] John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, Vol. 7 of The Complete Works of John Ruskin (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1905), 126.

[20] Ibid., 139.

[21] John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, Vol. 8 of The Complete Works of John Ruskin New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1905), 248.

[22] Ibid.

[23] Ibid., 263.

[24] Howard, The Architectural History of Venice, 98.

[25] John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, Vol. 9 of The Complete Works of John Ruskin New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1905), 16.

[26] Ibid., 308.

[27] Ibid., 3.

[28] Ibid., 112.

[29] Paulette Singley, “Devouring Architecture: Ruskin’s Insatiable Grotesque,” Assemblage, no. 32 (April 1997): 119, http://www.jstor.org (accessed September 27, 2008).

[30] Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, Vol. 9 of Works, 121.

[31] John Lewis Bradley, 261.

[32] Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, Vol. 7 of Works, 17.

[33] Ruskin, The Stone of Venices, Vol. 8 of Works, 287-288.

[34] Ibid., 289.

[35] Ibid., 291.

[36] Ibid., 315.

[37] Francis O’Gorman, “Ruskin’s Aesthetic Failure in The Stones of Venice,” Review of English Studies 55, no. 220 (June 2004): 374, http://services.oxfordjournals.org (accessed September 14, 2008).

[38] Sarah Quill and Alan Windsor, Ruskin’s Venice: The Stones Revisited (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2000), 19.

[39] Ruskin, The Stones of Venice¸ Vol. 7 of Works, 1.

[40] O’Gorman, 375.

[41] Ruskin, Modern Painters, 533.

Bibliography

Primary Sources:

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Ruskin, John. Modern Painters, edited and abridged by David Barrie. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987.

Ruskin, John. The Seven Lamps of Architecture. Vol. 1 of The Complete Works of John Ruskin. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1905.

Ruskin, John. The Stones of Venice. Vol. 7, 8, and 9 of The Complete Works of John Ruskin. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1905.

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Bradley, Alexander. Ruskin and Italy. Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1987.

Bullen, J.B. “Ruskin, Venice, and the Construction of Femininity.” The Review of English Studies 46, no. 184 (Nov. 1995): 502-520. http://www.jstor.org (accessed September 27, 2008).

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Cate, George Allan. John Ruskin: A Reference Guide. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1988.

Clark, Kenneth. Ruskin Today. London: Peregrine Books, 1967.

Cleere, Eileen. “Dirty Pictures: John Ruskin, ‘Modern Painters,’ and the Victorian Sanitation of Fine Art.” Representations 78 (Spring 2002): 116-139. http://www.jstor.org (accessed November 1, 2008).

Clegg, Jeanne. Ruskin and Venice. London: Junction Books, 1981.

Donoghue, Denis. “Ruskin, Venice, and the Fate of Beauty.” Southern Review 37, no. 3 (Summer 2001): 588-614. http://web.ebscohost.com (accessed September 14, 2008).

Garrigan, Kristine Ottesen. “Visions and Verities: Ruskin on Venetian Architecture.”  in Studies in Ruskin: Essays in Honor of Van Akin Burd, edited by Robert Rhodes and Del Ivan Janik, 153-172. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1982.

Harris, Wendell V. “Ruskin’s Theoretic Practicality and the Royal Academy’s Aesthetic Idealism.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 52, no.  1 (June 1997): 80-102. http://www.jstor.org (accessed September 27, 2008).

Helsinger, Elizabeth K. “History as Criticism: The Stones of Venice.” in Studies in Ruskin: Essays in Honor of Van Akin Burd, edited by Robert Rhodes and Del Ivan Janik, 173-205. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1982.

Helsinger, Elizabeth. “The Ruskin Renaissance.” Modern Philology 73, no.2 (November 1975): 166-177. http://www.jstor.org (accessed November 3, 2008).

Hewison, Robert. “Notes on the Construction of The Stones of Venice.” in Studies in Ruskin: Essays in Honor of Van Akin Burd, edited by Robert Rhodes and Del Ivan Janik, 131-152. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1982.

Howard, Deborah. The Architectural History of Venice. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.

Howard, Deborah. “Reflexions of Venice in Scottish Architecture.” Architectural History 44 (2001): 123-135. http://www.jstor.org (accessed November 1, 2008).

Matteson, John. “Constructing Ethics and the Ethics of Constructing: John Ruskin and the Humanity of the Builder.” Cross Currents 52, no. 3 (Fall 2002): 294-394. http://web.ebscohost.com (accessed September 29, 2008).

O’Gorman, Francis. “Ruskin’s Aesthetic of Failure in The Stones of Venice.” Review of English Studies 55, no. 220 (June 2004): 374-391. http://services.oxfordjournals.org (accessed September 14, 2008).

Quill, Sarah and Alan Windsor. Ruskin’s Venice: The Stones Revisited. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2000.

Singley, Paulette. “Devouring Architecture: Ruskin’s Insatiable Grotesque.” Assemblage, no. 32 (April 1997): 108-125. http://www.jstor.org (accessed September 27, 2008).

Sonstroem, David. “Prophet and Peripatetic in Modern Painters III and IV.” in Studies in Ruskin: Essays in Honor of Van Akin Burd, edited by Robert Rhodes and Del Ivan Janik, 85-114. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1982.

Unrau, John. Ruskin and St. Mark’s. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1984.

Tags: arth470z

Nineteenth century England, the world from which John Ruskin hailed, had a well-developed community of artists and critics well before Ruskin began writing. The Dulwich, the first public art gallery in England, and The National Gallery of Art both opened within ten years of Ruskin’s birth in 1819. While the Royal Academy was declining in popularity, demand for new exhibition spaces resulted in the creation of the Society of British Artists and the New Society of Painters in Water-Colours. As the number of artists and the level of talent in Britain grew, the buying and selling of works also increased. Critics of the day considered England to be “the most vital center of European art,” while modern critics have referred to the Victorian era as “the golden age of English art.”[1] With the growth of British art, the critical community in England also grew and developed. By the time Ruskin published his first work in 1843, critics had already been discussing many of the themes that Ruskin focused on in his work. For instance, the superiority of the Gothic was an idea well established before Ruskin, with the Houses of Parliament having been rebuilt in the Gothic style in the 1830s. Furthermore, the relationship between an artist, his work, and his morality had been extensively discussed, many critics having decided that virtue was imperative to creation of truly good art. While much of the basis for his ideas was not new, he was one of the first to fully develop these ideas and present them in a fresh, practical, and reasonable manner.[2]

With the revolutionizing of the British artistic community came a new view of other cultures, particularly that of Venice. From the Middle Ages through the Renaissance, the English tended to associate Venice with wealth, power, and prosperity. By the seventeenth century, this view had radically changed, as Venice no longer served as an international power and economic depression was plaguing all of Italy. While the English still admired Venice for its beauty, they felt the city was in decline, though very few of them were actually present in Venice during the nineteenth century.[3] This period, along with the writings of Gilbert Burnet, marks the beginning of the longstanding belief that the moral degradation of Venetian citizens had led to their city’s decline, an idea which culminates in Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice two centuries later.[4]

As evident in Ruskin’s work, many of the English still regarded Venice as a fallen empire during the nineteenth century, but this sentiment had become mixed with a sense of admiration and romanticism, Lord Byron having described the city as “the epitome of a paradise now lost.”[5] The writings of Byron and his contemporaries, along with paintings by J.M.W. Turner, Samuel Prout, and others, shaped this romanticized image of Venice held by most Englishmen in the early nineteenth century. It was with this vision that Ruskin first encountered Venice in 1835, marking the beginning of Ruskin’s love affair with the city, as well as the radical shift in the way that Ruskin viewed both Venice and his native England. His thorough studies of Byzantine and Gothic architecture and Venetian painters, such as Tintoretto, led him to reject the romantic, Byronic view of the city. He came to see two sides of Venice: its former state and its current state, “one ideal and ancient, the other modern and ruinous,” a realization that resulted in several of Ruskin’s major works, including Modern Painters, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, and The Stones of Venice.[6]

After Ruskin’s first two visits to Venice, in 1835 and 1841 with his parents, he still viewed the city as the Byronic heaven he had been expecting. He was a budding writer during this point in his life, but his focus had not yet shifted to the city itself. It was still focused on the work of J.M.W. Turner, who he described as “the man who beyond all doubt is the greatest of the age.”[7] This interest culminated in the first volume of Modern Painters, published in 1843, in which Ruskin argues that Turner is the best artist of the time as well as the only artist who paints a true representation of the “Venetian dream,” though his fellow landscape artists come close.[8] Though Ruskin remained an advocate of Turner throughout his career, he experienced a major turning point in his life and career when, in 1845, he took his first trip to Venice without the accompaniment of his parents. It was on this trip that Ruskin first began to look beyond the romantic view of the city, instead viewing the “buildings as artifacts, not as features in a landscape.”[9] In an 1845 letter to his father, he says, in regard to his perception of Venice, “I read it as a book to be worked through and enjoyed, but not as a dream to be interpreted. All the romance of it is gone…”[10]As his attention shifted towards the more practical elements of the city, his writings also shifted away from their previous poetical style to a significantly more practical style. Rather than focusing on aesthetic elements in art, he began to focus on more technical elements of art and architecture, as well ideas about morality and the relationship between art and nature.

Following this shift in Ruskin’s thinking, he published several of the most important works of his career: The Seven Lamps of Architecture in 1849, followed a couple of years later by The Stones of Venice from 1851-1853. Here he begins paying attention to specific elements of architecture, rather than merely the building as a whole. As well as looking at “the beauty of fragments,” he also begins to appreciate the importance of natural decay, even complaining about the restoration of St. Mark’s that removed signs of age and decay.[11] It is also this period of Ruskin’s life that his disdain for modern Venice becomes apparent, and is often extended to modern England. As well as discussions of art and architecture and an increased interest in drawing, many of his writings become warnings to the British people about the dangers of declining morality, as he felt that England was on the same path Venice had been on prior to its fall.[12] These ideas about art and morality remain major themes throughout the rest of Ruskin’s work, and he continues visiting, sketching, and writing about Venice well into his later years. However, his earlier works on painting and architecture are most significant for the field of art history, as his later writings grow increasingly more sociopolitical throughout the years.

Though Ruskin is best known in the art world for his architectural studies, he repeatedly returned to the topics of drawing and painting throughout his career, and was even an artist himself. His five-volume Modern Painters, written over the course of seventeen years during the early part of Ruskin’s career, provides both an insight into how his ideas were developing over time and, as Ernst Gombrich described it, “the most ambitious work of scientific art criticism ever attempted.”[13] There are several major themes present in each of these five volumes, but, as each volume was written separately, Ruskin’s ideas clearly change from the first to the fifth volume, suggesting that the writer’s ideas were undergoing constant reevaluation throughout his career as he increasingly found his “dogmatic statements falsified by his experiences.”[14] The first volume of Modern Painters originally carried the subtitle “Their Superiority on the Art of Landscape Painting to all the Ancient Masters, proved by example of The True, The Beautiful and the Intellectual, from the Works of Modern Artists, especially those of J.M.W. Turner, Esq., R.A.,” revealing the original purpose of the work: to argue the superiority of Turner.[15] As the first volume grew into four later volumes, Ruskin widened his focus, creating a monumental treatise on art during modern times, as well a thorough investigation of the connection between art, man, God, and nature. Throughout, he repeatedly returns to the subject of Venice, as seen through his own observations and as painted through the eyes of Turner, other painters of Venice, and painters from Venice. In his studies of Venetian painters, he concludes that they are superior, but he also argues the idea that art serves as “an index to the moral health of the society” that created it.[16] It is in the fifth volume of Modern Painters that Ruskin bemoans the current state of Venice, while questioning the role that art played in its downfall:

“I know not how far in humility, or how far in bitter and hopeless levity, the great Venetians gave their art to be blasted by the sea-winds or wasted by the worm. I know not whether in sorrowful disobedience, or in wanton compliance, they fostered the folly, and enriched the luxury of their age. This only I know, that in proportion to the greatness of their power was the shame of its desecration and the suddenness of its fall. The enchanter’s spell, woven by centuries of toil, was broken in the weakness of a moment; and swiftly, and utterly, as a rainbow vanishes, the radiance and the strength faded from the wings of the Lion.”[17]

Here, it is apparent that Ruskin, while still fascinated with Venice, has been thoroughly disillusioned about its brilliance. Although he is unable to determine what role art played in this downfall, he does suggest that art has served as a reflection of it. In his major discourse on architecture, The Stones of Venice, as well as in the work leading up to it, The Seven Lamps of Architecture¸ he repeatedly returns to this idea.

By 1849, Ruskin’s focus had turned to architecture, and he adapted many of his ideas about painting in order to apply them to this field. However, it is important to note here that Ruskin wrote his two major works of architecture before he finished the last three volumes of Modern Painters, in 1856 and 1860, respectively. Ruskin did not simply abandon painting to discuss architecture, but rather expanded his arguments to include both fields. In fact, in an 1852 letter to his father, Ruskin said that the third volume of Stones served as “an introduction to the last of Modern Painters,” signifying that Ruskin in no way abandoned his previous study.[18] His work on architecture began in 1839 with the release of The Poetry of Architecture, but this work received little attention. It ten years later with the release of The Seven Lamps of Architecture that Ruskin really began to emerge as a leading architectural writer, a position that he firmly established over the next five years as he released each of his three volumes of The Stones of Venice.

Seven Lamps, a book-length essay containing fourteen of Ruskin’s own sketches, lays out his seven major principles, or “lamps,” of architecture: Sacrifice, Truth, Power, Beauty, Life, Memory, and Obedience. While he does not specifically focus on Venice in this book, he develops the theories and ideas that he later applies to the architecture of Venice in Stones. The most important premise of this book is the idea, already seen in Modern Painters, that architecture is closely related to the moral state of a nation or city, be it England, Venice, or elsewhere in Europe. By doing this, Ruskin established architecture as not only an aesthetic presence, but also a political and “moral presence in the life of the average Victorian.”[19] For instance, “The Lamp of Sacrifice” is based on the premise that architecture, most specifically churches, should serve as proof of the society’s obedience and dedication to God. He takes this idea further in “The Lamp of Truth,” arguing for an “honest architecture,” one in which there is no deceit in its construction. These forms of deceit include the painting of surfaces to appear like another surface, machine-made ornaments, and the illusion of some other form of support than what actually exists.[20] The honesty of ornament was particularly important to Ruskin because he considered it the distinguishing factor between architecture and simple building. Ruskin further develops the ideas of truth in the following chapters, arguing that architecture should not only be honest but also a reflection of the society that produced it. For example, in “The Lamp of Memory,” he examines the relationship between a building and its history, reaching the conclusion that restoration “is a lie from beginning to end” because it destroys the original structure and attempts to place a work of the “cheapest and basest imitation” in its place, as he felt had been done to St. Mark’s.[21] Throughout each of the chapters, he consistently maintains that the Gothic style is the greatest form because it, as any noble form of architecture, is “in some sort the embodiment of the Polity, Life, History, and Religious Faith of nations.”[22] By detailing his views on what architecture should and should not be, Ruskin lays an excellent foundation for The Stones of Venice, in which he takes principles from Seven Lamps and applies them to specific structures in Venice.

John Ruskin released each of the three volumes of The Stones of Venice over a three-year period from 1851 to 1853. The first volume, “The Foundations,” is an architectural treatise that specifies the rules of right and wrong of architecture. For this reason it has been compared with Alberti’s De Re Aedificatoria from 1452 because both treatises approach architecture as a combination of both construction and decoration.[23] With the exception of the first chapter, “The Quarry,” this volume deals very little with the actual city of Venice, but rather continues Ruskin’s work in Seven Lamps by analyzing specific architectural details and concluding whether or not they are in accordance with the principles laid out in his previous work.

In contrast to the first volume of Stones, the second and third volumes deal with specific structures in the city of Venice. The second volume, subtitled “The Sea Stories,” looks specifically at Byzantine and Gothic architecture within the city, while clearly privileging these styles above the Venetian Renaissance that he discusses in the third volume, “The Fall.” Throughout each volume, Ruskin discusses both specific buildings, such as St. Mark’s and the Ducal Palace, and the stylistic evolution of numerous architectural features, including column bases, capitals, cornices, windows, and, most notably, arches. His studies of arches provide not only an example of the types of arches found around Venice, but also a “scheme for the development of the mature Gothic style,” as his chronology of stylistic progression focused mainly on this period.[24]

Ruskin first begins his analysis of arches in “The Foundations” with three chapters devoted to his discussion of both the technical aspects of constructing an arch and a brief overview of the basic styles of arches throughout Italy and the rest of Europe. Here, beyond simply describing the arch as a functional element necessary for the support of a building, he gives the arch a moral element by creating an analogy between an arch and man’s character. The arch line, or curved shape of the arch, serves as its moral character, with the forces of gravity and weight from above being temptations for the arch to stray from its intended function. To protect the arch from these temptations, the voussoirs, or the actual materials of the arch, act as its protection against ruin. The connection between man and arch is as follows: “if either arch or man expose themselves to their special temptations or adverse forces, outside of the voussoirs or proper and appointed armor, both will fall.”[25] By personifying the arch in this manner, Ruskin shows the reader a specific instance in which architecture serves as a moral force within Venice, or any other city. Once he informs the reader of the importance of a morally sound arch, he then describes the techniques required to construct such an arch, focusing mainly on the placement of masonry and proper distribution of weight above the arch. Throughout, he consistently privileges the Venetian Gothic over other forms of arches, praising its simple construction and exceptional weight distribution, and eventually concluding that “nothing can possibly be better or more graceful” than a well-constructed Venetian Gothic arch.[26] He further expands on his love for this style in volume two of The Stones, providing a thorough survey of the arch’s evolution over time.

In “The Sea Stories,” Ruskin describes the development of Byzantine architecture, followed by the shift to the Gothic style and its subsequent development, focusing on the stylistic changes that took place in arches and other elements as demonstrated on Venetian buildings. He chooses to focus on arches over doorways and windows as evidence for his argument because he considers them the “most distinctly traceable” elements of a building.[27] Interestingly, he points out that the Gothic reached Venice after it was already established on the mainland, meaning that Venice embraced the Byzantine far longer than other places in Italy. According to Ruskin, this signifies that the emergence of the Gothic in Venice was not a matter of architectural innovation, but rather a struggle between earlier conventions and a more contemporary style, equating early Gothic structures in the city to a prisoner “entangled among the enemy’s forces, and maintaining their ground till their friends came up to sustain them.”[28] He illustrates this idea by chronicling the gradual changes to arches that occurred early in the shift towards the Gothic during the eleventh century, followed by later, more radical changes in the fifteenth century.

Ruskin’s diagram, “The Orders of Venetian Arches,” shows the six orders of Venetian windows that he developed, with the bottom row being successive styles of arched doorways. The first group shows a typical Byzantine arch, while the second and third groups represent the transitional styles moving towards the full Gothic. Groups four and five are purely Gothic arches, as well as the styles that lasted the longest, beginning in the thirteenth century and ending in the fifteenth. Group six represents the late Gothic arch, present before architecture began to shift towards the Renaissance style. He gives numerous examples of each of the orders, including several notable buildings: the Ca’ da Mosto , the Casa Sagredo, and the Palazzo Priuli at San Severo. As expected, Ruskin considers the fourth and fifth orders, those most Gothic in nature, to be the best, as “the root of all that is greatest in Christian art is struck in the thirteenth century.”[29] Though he presents these orders as if they succeed each other in neat, chronological fashion, this is certainly not the case, as each order overlaps the others and several orders may exist on the same façade.[30] Still, Ruskin’s classification provides a wonderful summation of the trajectory that Gothic architecture was following prior to its shift into the Renaissance.

By the time of the Renaissance, Ruskin has little to say about the specifics of arches in architecture, likely because they fell out of fashion, for the most part, with the exception of plain Byzantine or Roman-style arches. Still, he does devote the entire third volume of The Stones to his discussion of Renaissance architecture, much of which is marked by a general distaste for the period as a whole. This is not to say that he disliked every Renaissance structure in Venice, for, he greatly praise several of them, but he did feel that the era’s architecture grew progressively worse through each of the three stages within the Renaissance that he identified. The first stage, the Early Renaissance, was the “first corruptions introduced to the Gothic schools,” including the incorporation of precise symmetry, plain, undecorated stone, and a general feeling of academic coldness. However, he did praise this stage for its return to the earlier Byzantine elements of design and color, as seen in buildings like the Palazzo Manzoni and the Scuoloa di San Marco.[31] However, by the time of the Roman Renaissance, the second stage, he saw that architecture had returned to the conventions of ancient Rome, though it recreates it with none of its original vitality or innovation. Though he greatly praises the Palazzo Grimani for its delicate decoration and the majesty that it imparts to the Rialto, even calling it one of the greatest Renaissance palaces in Europe, his general sentiment about this period is that it is dull and unimaginative, regardless of its so-called perfection. He completely omits any mention of Jacopo Sansovino’s Loggetta from this book and he describes Palladio, at the Church of St. Giorgio Maggiore, as having “pierced his pediment with a circular cavity, merely because he had not wit enough to fill it with sculpture.”[32] Ruskin best sums up his feelings about the Roman Renaissance when he says, “It revisits the places through which it had passed in the morning light, but it is now with wearied limbs and under the gloomy shadows of evening.”[33]

If Ruskin seems unimpressed with earlier Renaissance styles, he is thoroughly disgusted by the third stage, “The Grotesque Renaissance,” his term for what is today know as the Baroque period. Here, he feels architecture has lost all of the moral character he had described so eloquently in his earlier discussions on arches, and has instead been turned into the “perpetuation in stone of the ribaldries of drunkenness” and self-indulgence.[34] This stage receives its name from the incorporation of grotesque elements, or distorted and ugly faces and bodies, often with stuck out tongues, displayed on buildings and bridges. Ruskin makes a point to distinguish this “false grotesque” from the previous “true” version seen in the Gothic period, with the use of gargoyles and other distorted figures. In contrast to the earlier type, this version of grotesque is an example of human imagination run amuck, as it steps out of the bounds of stable, organized renderings into images of the basest forms of debauchery and instability.[35] In this chapter of The Stones, The Church of Santa Maria Formosa receives the brunt of Ruskin’s scorn, being the location of numerous grotesque elements, as well as being completely barren of any form of legitimate religious decoration, in Ruskin’s opinion. The worst feature, in his opinion, is one of the heads, “leering in bestial degradation,” from the façade of the church. As offensive as he finds this head, he feels it is appropriate for this period because it serves as an incarnation of the degradation that resulted in the city’s decline, thereby allowing the viewer to “know what pestilence it was that came and breathed upon her beauty.”[36]

While Ruskin discusses numerous buildings that exemplify each of the three major styles in Venice, Byzantine, Gothic, and Renaissance, his discussion of the Ducal Palace is particularly interesting because this building was built over several centuries and incorporates elements of each of the three styles. Ruskin uses the Ducal Palace as not only an example of each of the styles he had discussed, but also as an allegory to the history of the city itself. An 1852 letter to his father reads, “The whole book will be a kind of ‘moral of the Ducal Palace of Venice…’ I shall give a scattered description of a moulding here and an arch there- but they will all be mere notes to the account of the rise and fall of Venice.”[37] Clearly, Ruskin did more than simply give a description of “a moulding here and an arch there” prior to his study of the Palace, but throughout the first and second volume, he repeatedly mentions its architectural integrity and slowly works his way up to his full analysis of the structure in the final chapter of “The Sea Stories.”

The Ducal Palace, “the central building of the world,” was rebuilt during each of the three periods that Ruskin discusses.[38] Unfortunately, the Byzantine palace was almost entirely destroyed and built over when the Gothic palace was constructed. While some of the Gothic palace was built over, much of it now exists in combination with the Renaissance palace. The original Ducal Palace is believed to have been built in the early ninth century, coinciding with the time that the Venetian Republic was developing as a world power. For this reason, Ruskin considers the modern day Ducal Palace to be one of the last remnants of the city’s former glory.[39] The structure was heavily damaged by fire on two different occasions, and little is written about its original state, making it difficult to ascertain exactly how the building looked. However, Ruskin does say that the building was richly decorated with gold, sculpture, and marble, and possessed many features similar to those seen at the Fondaco de Turchi.[40] The structure remained this way until the Gothic palace replaced it in the early fourteenth century. Ruskin points out that while the Byzantine palace coincided with the foundation of the Venetian Republic, the Gothic palace coincided with the beginning of aristocratic rule in Venice. The building was expanded to house the Great Council chamber, the Ducal apartments, and a series of rooms that served as prisons until the seventeenth century. As one would imagine, he considers this stage of the palace’s construction the greatest, even calling the Gothic Ducal Palace “the Parthenon of Venice.”[41] However, during the fifteenth century, sections of the building were being redone in the Renaissance style, beginning with the destruction of the lasts remnants of the Byzantine palace and the building of a new façade facing the Piazzetta. Today, the Piazzetta façade, along with the Rio Façade and the Sea Façade, represent the changes that occurred to the building, with the Sea Façade being the most Gothic and the Rio Façade being a prime example of early Renaissance architecture. Although Ruskin does not find the Renaissance elements at the Ducal Palace overly offensive, he does comment on their reflection of the changing religious environment in Venice at the time. He criticizes the shift away from scenes of Christ’s life towards images of human virtues and literary references, noting that they changed “exactly in proportion as the Christian religion became less vital…and gradually, as the thoughts of men were withdrawn from their Redeemer, and fixed upon themselves,” yet another form of the self-indulgence that would contribute to the city’s fall.[42]

This form of social commentary is prevalent throughout Ruskin’s work, as he did not simply write The Stones to serve as an architectural guide to the city of Venice, though it is credited with spreading the popularity of Venetian architecture to the rest of Europe.[43] But beyond his major influence on architecture and criticism, he is perhaps best known for the political and social undertones in his early work, despite their seeming focus on art and architecture. The majority of his work from the last thirty years of his life focused directly on politics and social history, making it seem, on the surface, as if he shifted gears in the middle of his career. However, this is certainly not true, he simply withdrew from using art as a means through which to communicate his ideas. In The Stones, Ruskin repeatedly raises questions regarding the relationship between art and society, and often relates the case of Venice to his native England, having written the book as an “awful warning to contemporary England.”[44] The opening chapter of The Stones begins with a homily on the importance of learning from the history of previous fallen empires, with Tyre and Venice as his examples, concluding that if England forgets the example of their predecessors they may be subject to ruin of an equal or greater degree.[45] This was not a particularly new idea at the time: Byron and others had been touching on this idea for a while, but Ruskin was certainly the first to argue the point in such detail and with such intensity. He was also one of the first to fully develop the idea that a society’s morality could be discerned by studying their art and architecture. Despite his development of these ideas, his arguments often appear convoluted to the reader, resulting in the many of the mediocre or confused receptions that he received from his contemporaries. For this reason, Ruskin considered The Stones to be a failure, for he was utterly disgusted that his third volume received the most attention while the earlier two were largely ignored when they were published, though they have since been thoroughly studied.[46] Still, the work brought him much acclaim from those who were able to both press through to its end and understand what they had read, resulting in the enormous influence the book has had since its publication and marking the transition from his art-based criticism into political, economic, and social criticism.

The period in which Ruskin rapidly published these enormously influential works, Modern Painters, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, and The Stones of Venice, is generally considered his most prolific period. As his writing turned more and more away from art and architecture, it became increasingly more and more incoherent to the average person. This sense of confusion about his writing, along with the mysterious mental illness that plagued him late in life, resulted in a decreased interest in his later work. This is not to say that Ruskin published nothing significant or influential after The Stones; he published numerous treatises, books, and essays on a variety of political topics, but, as those works did not focus on art or architecture, they are not examined here. Looking at the corpus of writing he produced throughout his career, it is easy to see where Ruskin appears to be forward-thinking and innovative. Beyond the artistic and architectural examples previously discussed, his economic writings in the 1860s essentially condemned the basis of the British economy and he suggested the implementation of a new social order in the following decade.[47] But despite Ruskin’s seeming foresight and shifting philosophies, he was still always firmly rooted in the established ideals of earlier times, having described himself in his autobiography as “a violent Tory of the old school.”[48] This affinity for the past is clearly evident in his works, serving as one of the characteristic elements of Ruskin’s ideas. For, even in his defense of Turner’s prowess, he describes the English school of landscape painters as “in reality nothing else than a healthy effort to fill the void which the destruction of Gothic architecture has left.”[49]

By the time of Ruskin’s death in 1900, he had hardly been able to communicate in any coherent manner for the last ten years. His last published work was his autobiography written in 1889, Praeterita, which is surprisingly articulate considering his severely deteriorated mental state at the time. By that time, he had taken eleven trips to Venice and had long considered himself an adopted son of city. In Modern Painters, when discussing the virtues of Venice in relation to those of Florence, he says, “We Venetians also, must be able to use our swords, and on ground which is none of the steadiest.”[50] By investigating the architecture of the city and holding up its past as an ideal for the future, Ruskin was able to radically change the typical, Byronic view of Venice that his fellow Englishmen possessed, trading it for a true glimpse into the depths of one of the most unique cities in the world.

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[1] Wendell V. Harris, “Ruskin’s Theoretic Practicality and the Royal Academy’s Aesthetic Idealism,” Nineteenth-Century Literature 52, no. 1 (June 1997): 81-82, http://www.jstor.org (accessed September 27, 2008).

[2] Ibid., 84.

[3] Alexander Bradley, Ruskin and Italy (Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1987): 28.

[4] Jeanne Clegg, Ruskin and Venice (London: Junction Books, 1981), 17.

[5] Ibid., 28.

[6] Ibid., 2.

[7] Kenneth Clark, Ruskin Today (London: Peregrine Books, 1967), 25.

[8] Clegg, 1.

[9] Ibid., 53.

[10] Ibid., 54.

[11] Ibid., 56.

[12] John Batchelor, John Ruskin: A Life (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2000), 332.

[13] John Ruskin, Modern Painters, edited and abridged by David Barrie (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987): xv.

[14] Clark, 132.

[15] Clegg, 45.

[16] Harris, 90.

[17] Ruskin, Modern Painters, 543.

[18] John Lewis Bradley, ed., Ruskin’s Letters from Venice: 1851-1852 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955), 192.

[19] Batchelor, 76.

[20] John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, Vol. 1 of The Complete Works of John Ruskin (New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell & Co., 1905), 32.

[21] Ibid., 180.

[22] Ibid., 184.

[23] Cornelis J. Baljon, “Interpreting Ruskin: The Argument of The Seven Lamps of Architecture and The Stones of Venice,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 55, no. 4 (Fall 1997): 406, http://web.ebscohost. com (accessed September 14, 2008).

[24] Deborah Howard, The Architectural History of Venice (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 98.

[25] John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, Vol. 7 of The Complete Works of John Ruskin (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1905), 126.

[26] Ibid., 139.

[27] John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, Vol. 8 of The Complete Works of John Ruskin New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1905), 248.

[28] Ibid.

[29] Ibid., 263.

[30] Howard, The Architectural History of Venice, 98.

[31] John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, Vol. 9 of The Complete Works of John Ruskin New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1905), 16.

[32] Ibid., 308.

[33] Ibid., 3.

[34] Ibid., 112.

[35] Paulette Singley, “Devouring Architecture: Ruskin’s Insatiable Grotesque,” Assemblage, no. 32 (April 1997): 119, http://www.jstor.org (accessed September 27, 2008).

[36] Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, Vol. 9 of Works, 121.

[37] John Lewis Bradley, 261.

[38] Ruskin, The Stones, Vol. 7 of Works, 17.

[39] Ruskin, The Stones, Vol. 8 of Works, 287-288.

[40] Ibid., 289.

[41] Ibid., 291.

[42] Ibid., 315.

[43] Francis O’Gorman, “Ruskin’s Aesthetic Failure in The Stones of Venice,” Review of English Studies 55, no. 220 (June 2004): 374, http://services.oxfordjournals.org (accessed September 14, 2008).

[44] Sarah Quill and Alan Windsor, Ruskin’s Venice: The Stones Revisited (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2000), 19.

[45] Ruskin, The Stones¸ Vol. 7 of Works, 1.

[46] O’Gorman, 375.

[47] Batchelor, 332.

[48] Robert Hewison, “Notes of the Construction of The Stones of Venice,” in Studies in Ruskin: Essays in Honor of Van Akin Burd, edited by Robert Rhodes and Del Ivan Janik (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1982), 150.

[49] Batchelor, 332.

[50] Ruskin, Modern Painters, 533.

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I will be focusing on John Ruskin’s time spent in Venice and on his work produced in and about Venice. I’ll be looking at his critical works, his personal letters, and books and articles written about him. I have two goals in mind for my project. First, I’d like to demonstrate John Ruskin’s importance to the field of art history, both during his lifetime and since then. And second, I’d like to show what a powerful influence the city of Venice was on Ruskin’s life and his work, and why he was so drawn to the city (he actually called himself “an adopted son of Venice”). While I will discuss several of his works, I’ll be looking at two main ones: The Stones of Venice and The Seven Lamps of Architecture, which are actually very closely related. I’m also really interested in exploring why he believed the Renaissance to have been a decline in Venice (he thought that Gothic architecture to be “the noblest style.” I’d like to explore why he thought this, since it goes against general opinion that places the Renaissance up on a pedestal.

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My paper, and corresponding online exhibit, will focus on the relationship between John Ruskin and Venice, as well as its importance in the field of art history. This will include a discussion of Ruskin’s time spent in Venice and a discussion of his writings on Venice and Venetian art, particularly from his work The Stones of Venice. By analyzing his critical works, his personal writings, and writings about him, I hope to show that the city of Venice was a powerful influence on Ruskin and his work.

So far in my research, I have uncovered several books and several journal articles discussing Ruskin’s time in Venice and his writing pertaining to Venice, as well as his work as a whole. Each of these works seems to consider Ruskin the premier modern critic on Venetian art and architecture. In addition to these books and articles, I found a bibliography of works about him. This should prove quite useful in my further research. Unfortunately, our library does not have The Stones of Venice, and I have yet to locate it.

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The Bamiyan Valley is located in northern Afghanistan, along the western portion of the Silk Road and about 100 miles west of Kabul. Two colossal Buddha statues carved into the cliffs were once the most prominent feature of this site, being the “first appearance of the colossal cult image in Buddhist art,” as well as a major tourist attraction. Unfortunately, in March 2001 the Taliban destroyed these rare cultural icons, leaving the world to wonder if the world’s largest standing Buddhas could ever be restored to their original state and debate whether or not they should be rebuilt.

These two massive statues were carved over 1500 years ago directly into niches in the cliff faces in order to encourage pilgrims traveling along the Silk Road, as well as to exemplify the “doctrine of the Universal Buddha.” The smaller of the two, generally dated to the second or third century AD, was representative of a Gandharan artistic tradition, characterized by flowing drapery and imagery from nearby Afghani provinces. The larger Buddha, on the other hand, was built around the fifth century and exhibited a clear Indian influence in both the sculpture and surrounding murals. Though little is known about the specifics of their construction, the Bamiyan Valley sites were a testament to the major influence that both Buddhist and Indian culture had across Asia, as well as an example of a major shift that occurred within the Buddhist religious art during this time.

The Bamiyan Valley region has been fought over for years, with the Taliban vowing to destroy the monuments as soon as they regained control of the area. In February 2001, the Taliban issued an edict that “the real god is only Allah, and all other false gods should be removed,” resulting in oppression, a massacre of Shia Muslims in Bamiyan, and the destruction of the Buddhas and numerous other cultural icons the following month. This took several weeks, dynamite, anti-aircraft missiles, and tank fire and resulted in backlash against the Taliban from all over the world, particularly from nearby Buddhist and Islamic nations.

Many feel these statues, emblems of “cultural syncretism and religious tolerance of an earlier age,” should be rebuilt not only for their beauty, but also as a political and religious statement to the Taliban. Others take a more practical approach, saying that even though the new Buddhas will never hold the same historical or religious significance as they once did, they would draw more tourists and increase the morale of Afghani citizens. While many feel the Buddhas must be rebuilt, there are others within Afghanistan and around the world that feel that the statues have been lost forever and should remain empty niches as a testament to the history of what occurred there. Others are seeking to find middle ground, such as Japanese artist Hiro Yamagata, who wish to beam laser projections of the Buddhas onto the rock faces in order to commemorate what was once there.

Regardless of whether the Buddhas are reconstructed or not, it is imperative not to loose sight of the history of Bamiyan that cannot be covered. Those rough, empty niches in the rock faces are as much a part of history as the colossal Buddhas that used to stand there. Furthermore, their destruction was not an isolated incident, but rather part of larger movement by the Taliban regime that resulted in not only iconoclasm, but also human death. New York Times columnist Roger Cohen says the following:

“This was the Afghan burning of the books. The Nazis burned Brecht. The Taliban, then sheltering Osama bin Laden, bombarded the “un-Islamic” Buddhas. The burning presaged war. The destruction presaged 9/11: two Buddhas, two towers. Heinrich Heine noted that: “When they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings.” When Buddhas buckle, people will be crushed. There is talk of reassembling the Buddhas, or of using solar power to beam laser holograms of their forms onto the cliff. I say, reassemble one, for hope, but not both. Absence speaks, shames, reminds.”

Like the entire concept of “art,” the study of art history is subjective: there is no correct lens through which to view art and its history. Consequently, numerous different approaches to the discipline have arisen throughout the years, including the social history of art. Three scholars, Arnold Hauser, Frederick Hartt, and T.J. Clark, wrote essays on this topic, each attempting to demonstrate the relationship between art and society, as well as how to implement this approach.

German theoretician and art historian Arnold Hauser wrote his 1959 book The Philosophy of Art History in order to explain the connection between sociology and art history. He says that all art derives from the social conditions it was created in and therefore becomes a form of communication. However, Hauser acknowledges the shortcomings of his argument, which had been “almost universally rejected,” because it is not universal and that it tends to create generalizations, though it still plays an important role when used with other approaches.

Frederick Hartt, in his 1964 essay “Art and Freedom in Quattrocento Florence,” focuses his discussion specifically on the early Italian Renaissance in Florence during the fifteenth century. He shows the connection between artists and their society, specifically their patrons, and how societal concerns are “reflected and paralleled in the content and style” of Florentine art, while also emphasizing the importance of guilds. Because Hartt focuses on a specific time and place and uses specific examples, rather than making broad generalizations, his argument is far more effective and complete than Hauser’s.

Professor T.J. Clark takes more of a radical approach to art history in his 1974 article “The Conditions of Artistic Creation,” stating that the field of art history has become stagnant and needs a complete reinvention. Unlike Hauser and Hartt, who focus on the benefits of using this approach, Clark discusses how to actually implement the social history of art. Though Clark’s article is “somewhat ambivalent” and may not apply to all artistic periods, its revolutionary nature marks “the start of what has come to be called the new art history.”

This approach is clearly a backlash against formalism, which considers form and style the only things that are necessary to study a work of art. Without social history, art loses its meaning and simply becomes an object for viewing, without any sort of message. Hauser likens the absence of social history to the meaninglessness of watching football merely for the aesthetics of the player’s movements without an understanding of the game or “the object of all this running, jumping, and pushing.”

This approach raises many important questions. For instance, is this approach universal or does it only apply to specific times and places, like Quattrocento Florence? Can this approach be used exclusively, or does it need to be used in conjunction with other approaches? Clark feels art historians must ask these questions, as well as inventing new ones, in order to take the approach even further than Hauser and Hartt have done, creating a completely new art history that is based mainly on social history.

Fallingwater, also known as the Kaufmann House, is one of the most famous houses in America, built by America’s most famous architect. It has been called “the best all-time work of American architecture,” representing the perfect example of Wright’s “concept of organic architecture,” which sought to unify man and nature. The house was designed in 1935 for Edgar J. Kaufmann and his family in Bear Run, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The house was built over a set of waterfalls and made to look harmonious with the surrounding rocks and water, making it look as if it is suspended over the water. Fallingwater is the only Wright house that still contains its original furnishings and art work, as well as its original landscape. In 1963, the house was entrusted to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, the same group that restored it owns it today.

While Fallingwater is considered one of Wright’s greatest masterpieces, the site has had numerous structural and engineering problems since it was built. Interestingly, Kaufmann was concerned about the stability of Fallingwater when it was being built, causing him to hire engineers to review the plans. They concluded that the the beams and cantilevers were not strong enough and needed to reinforced; however, Wright angrily refused to change the plans because they felt the changes would impede his design, threatening to quit the project if Kaufmann made him change the plans. But the engineers were correct: shortly after it was finished, cracks in the main terrace began to appear. While there have been numerous other problems with the house, including corrosion, bad paint, and leaks, the most serious was the sagging of the main terrace and all of the cantilevers due to the faulty structural plan.

In the 1990s, the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, along with Robert Silman Associates, endeavored to restore and stabilize the home. The terraces and cantilevers were reinforced without altering the exterior appearance of the house. The house was also re-waterproofed and repainted, and several structures were rebuilt. By the end of the project, the house, which originally cost $155,000, was restored for 11.5 million dollars.

Despite these serious structural problems, the house is still considered one of the most important architectural sites in America. Aside from the chimneys and the small terrace that were rebuilt, the rest of the house is original, including the furnishings. Because many of the problems with the house were not simply cosmetic, but posed actual safety risks, this restoration was certainly necessary. Furthermore, as the most famous house in America, Fallingwater needed to be preserved as close as possible to its original state, a task at which the WPC has succeeded.

Walter Gropius, born in Berlin in 1883, is one of the fathers of modern architecture. He began his career in the architectural firm of Peter Behrens, one of the first architects of utilitarianism. In 1925, he opened his famous and extremely influential Bauhaus School of Design. He later moved to the United States and taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he formed a group called “The Architects’ Collaborative.” By his death in 1969, Gropius had received numerous awards from across the world, as well as founded one of the most influential and revolutionary schools of twentieth century architecture.

While Gropius’ most famous work is the Bauhaus Dessau building in which his school was housed, he designed numerous important buildings throughout his career. Some major highlights of his oeuvre include the Fagus Factory, the Gropius House, Harvard Graduate Center, University of Baghdad and the Pan Am Building (now the MetLife Building). While the Bauhaus’ main focus was architecture, the style, which strove to unify crafts, art and technology, was also applied to other forms of design, including furniture. In addition to designing, he was a prolific writer. Through his writings, he laid out the basic tenets of Modernism, which strove to unite form and function, as well as embracing industrialism. For his major contributions to the development of modernism, Gropius had received worldwide recognition and “provided a lasting basis for the derivation of New Architecture in terms of artistic theory.”

            As many of you may know, the story of the prodigal son, told in Luke 15:11-32, tells of a wealthy man who has two sons. One of his son’s demands his inheritance early and runs off to a life of partying and traveling, only to squander all of his money away and end up hungry and living in a pig sty, literally. He realizes that the servants and workers at his father’s farm have an abundance of food and a far better life than he does. Consequently, he decides he will go to his father, beg forgiveness, and ask his father to allow him to be a farmhand. However, when he returns home, his father is overjoyed to see him, immediately embraces him, and throws a feast with his fattest calf. The father’s other son, who had remained at the farm and been responsible, was angry that his father would throw such a feast for his wayward brother. The father tells him that they must rejoice because the prodigal son was dead and in now alive, he was lost and now he is found.

Countless artists throughut history have depicted in their art. Each artist has their own special way of showing the scene of the prodigal’s return, but I chose two I thought each had very different, and unique, depictions of the same scene: Rembrandt van Rijn’s Return of the Prodigal Son and James Tissot’s Le Retour de L’enfant Prodigue.

Rembrandt’s version was a departure from previous depictions of the Return. His painting, c. 1662, showed an incredible amount of emotion, as well as emotion. The father lovingly embraces the son, which is symbolic of the divine love and forgiveness God bestows on humans. Furthermore, the red of the father’s robe is used to symbolize love. Another important, and unusual for the time, aspect of this is the fact that the son is given the same emphasis of the father. One character does not dominate the scene, but rather they share it. Also, the bystanders are very reserved, which you will see if radically different from Tissot’s bystanders, who almost dominate the scene.

Scholars have suggested that this painting, done towards the end of Rembrandt’s life, is an example of the how Rembrandt used Biblical depictions to reflect his own spirituality. One scholar says that this painting is the “last, and perhaps most profound manifestation of Rembrandt’s attitude, symbolizing the forgiveness of God the Father toward weary and repentant man.”

Rembrandt’s emotional, spiritual scene is quite different from Tissot’s, which is almost comical. Done in 1862, it is set in a urban, somewhat contemporary courtyard. The father rushes to meet his son, who is on his knees begging forgiveness; however, they are surrounded in dozens of scornful onlookers. These people look upon the son with varying degrees of interest. Some seem contemptful, while others seem to find him ridiculous. Furthermore, while the father and son appear to have affection for one another, the deep emotion of Rembrandt’s painting is absent.

Another comical aspect of the scene is the clothing they are wearing, something Tissot is known for. Many of the people appear to be in “costumey” type clothes: giant over-sized cloaks, and Renaissance-type clothing. Though they are wearing more contemporary clothing than Biblical times, they are not, for the most part, contemporary with the nineteenth century.Furthermore, a man will be wearing a large regal looking cloak while the woman next to him is in dirty work attire. The clothing, the juxtaposition of the characters, and the scorn apparent on their faces turns this into a ridiculous scene, completely opposite of Rembrandt’s

It is remarkable how differently each of these artists have depicted the exact moment of the Prodigal Son parable. One is emotional, has deep symbolic meaning, and reflects the spiritual situation of the artist himself. The other seems to be trivializing the subject, turning it into this ludicrous scene. These are only two examples of the numerous ways in which this same scene has been interpreted and depicted by artists across the years.

Well, I guess we are supposed to “summarize our thoughts” about our presentation on here. I, along with Claire, made the presentation about monographs. Specifically, I talked about Bissell’s book Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art. Bissell focuses a lot more on placing Gentileschi in the context of her life and her society, rather than focusing on feminism, as Garrard does. This was interesting to me because he didn’t seem to analyze her works through a “well it’s because she’s a woman” lense. He also makes more of an effort to be objective than Garrard does. I think this a major part of the reason why his book seems more scholarly than Garrard’s does. His book seems more geared toward serious inquiries into her life and work, and while he definitely likes her (or else he wouldn’t have spent 35 years preparing to write a huge book about her, right!), he seems like he tries to present her more objectively.

The most important thing that Bissell accomplished with this book was the creation of the first catalogue raisonne of every work that has been attributed to her, even questionable ones.

Overall, I think these monographs are a fabulous source of information for us as students. Not only do they include an overwhelming amount of information, but they are also written by scholars in the field of art history and they are experts on Artemisia Gentileschi. Because of this, they seem like especially reliable sources.

Also, in class people were talking about how exhibition catalogues are often unreliable because they are written so fast. I don’t think that is a problem with Bissell’s catalogue raisonne. As I said before, he says in his preface that he did 35 years of research in order to write this book.