“Who fancied what a pretty sightThis rock would be, if edged aroundWith living snowdrops?—circlet bright!How glorious to this orchard ground!Was it the humor of a child?” etc.
“Who fancied what a pretty sightThis rock would be, if edged aroundWith living snowdrops?—circlet bright!How glorious to this orchard ground!Was it the humor of a child?” etc.
“Who fancied what a pretty sightThis rock would be, if edged aroundWith living snowdrops?—circlet bright!How glorious to this orchard ground!Was it the humor of a child?” etc.
But I cannot apply the same principles to more serious matters, and vary the reading of the verses into application to the works on Edinburgh Castle, thus:
“Who fancied what a pretty sightThis rock would be, if edged aroundWith tiny turrets, pierced and light,How glorious to this warlike ground!”
“Who fancied what a pretty sightThis rock would be, if edged aroundWith tiny turrets, pierced and light,How glorious to this warlike ground!”
“Who fancied what a pretty sightThis rock would be, if edged aroundWith tiny turrets, pierced and light,How glorious to this warlike ground!”
Therefore, though I do not know exactly what you have got to do in Edinburgh Castle, whatever it may be, I am certain the only right way to do it is theplainway. Build what is needed—chapel, barracks, or dwelling-house—in the best places, in a military point of view, of dark stone, and bomb-proof, keeping them low, and within the existing line of ramparts.That is the rational thing to do; and the inhabitants of Edinburgh will find it in the end the picturesque thing. It would be so under any circumstances; but it is especially so in this instance; for the grandeur of Edinburgh Castle depends eminently on the great, unbroken, yet beautifully varied parabolic curve in which it descends from the Round Tower on the Castle Hill to the terminating piece of impendent precipice on the north. It is the last grand feature of Edinburgh left as yet uninjured. You have filled up your valley with a large chimney, a mound, and an Institution; broken in upon the Old Town with a Bank, a College, and several fires; dwarfed the whole of Princes Street by the Scott Monument; and cut Arthur’s Seat in half by the Queen’s Drive. It only remains for you to spoil the curve of your Castle, and your illustrations of the artistic principle of breadth will be complete.
It may appear at first that I depart from the rule of usefulness I have proposed, in entreating for the confinement of all buildings undertaken within the existing ramparts, in order to preserve the contour of the outside rock. But I presume that in the present state of military science, and of European politics, Edinburgh Castle is not a very important military position; and that to make it a serviceable fortress or citadel, many additional works would be required, seriously interfering with the convenience of the inhabitants of the New Town, and with the arrangements of the Railroad Company. And, as long as these subordinate works are not carried out, I do not see any use in destroying your beautiful rock, merely to bring another gun to bear, or give accommodation to another company. But I both see, and would earnestly endeavor to advocate, the propriety of keeping the architecture of the building within those ramparts masculine and simple in style, and of not allowing a mistaken conception of picturesqueness to make a noble fortress look like a child’s toy.
Believe me, my dear Sir, very faithfully yours,J. Ruskin.
[From “The Daily Telegraph,” December 22, 1871.]CASTLES AND KENNELS.
To the Editor of “The Daily Telegraph.”
Sir: I was astonished the other day by your article on taverns, but never yet in my life was so much astonished by anything in print as by your to-day’s article on castles.[135]
I am a castle-lover of the truest sort. I do not suppose any man alive has felt anything like the sorrow or anger with which I have watched the modern destruction by railroad and manufacture, helped by the wicked improvidence of our great families, of half the national memorials of England, either actually or in effect and power of association—as Conway, for instance, now vibrating to ruin over a railroad station. For Warwick Castle, I named it in my letter of last October, in “Fors Clavigera,”[136]as a type of the architectural treasures ofthis England of ours known to me and beloved from childhood to this hour.
But, Sir, I am at this hour endeavoring to find work and food for a boy of seventeen, one of eight people—two married couples, a woman and her daughter, and this boy and his sister—who all sleep together in one room, some 18 ft. square, in the heart of London; and you call upon me for a subscription to help to rebuild Warwick Castle.
Sir, I am an old and thoroughbred Tory, and as such I say, “If a noble family cannot rebuild their own castle, in God’s name let them live in the nearest ditch till they can.”
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,J. Ruskin
Denmark Hill,Dec.20.
[From “The Daily Telegraph,” December 25, 1871.]VERONA v. WARWICK.
To the Editor of “The Daily Telegraph.”
Sir: Of lodging for poor and rich you will perhaps permit a further word or two from me, even in your close columns for Christmas morning. You think me inconsistent because I wanted to buy Verona, and do not want to restore Warwick.[137]
I wanted, and still want, to buy Verona. I would give half my fortune to buy it for England, if any other people would help me. But I would buy it, that what is left of it might not be burned, and what is lost of itnotrestored. It would indeed be very pleasant—not to me only, but to many other sorrowful persons—if thingscouldbe restored when we chose. I would subscribe willingly to restore, for instance, the manger wherein the King of Judah lay cradled this day someyears since, and not unwillingly to restore the poorer cradle of our English King-maker, were it possible. But for the making of a new manger, to be exhibited for the edification of the religious British public, I will not subscribe. No; nor for the building of mock castles, or mock cathedrals, or mocks of anything. And the sum of what I have to say in this present matter may be put in few words.
As an antiquary—which, thank Heaven, I am—I say, “Part of Warwick Castle is burnt—’tis pity. Take better care of the rest.”
As an old Tory—which, thank Heaven, I am—I say, “Lord Warwick’s house is burned. Let Lord Warwick build a better if he can—a worse if he must; but in any case, let him neither beg nor borrow.”
As a modern renovator and Liberal—which, thank Heaven, I am not—I would say, “By all means let the public subscribe to build a spick-and-span new Warwick Castle, and let the pictures be touched up, and exhibited by gaslight; let the family live in the back rooms, and let there be atable d’hôtein the great hall at two and six every day, 2s.6d.a head, and let us have Guy’s bowl for a dinner bell.”
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,John Ruskin.
Denmark Hill, S.E.,24th(for 25th)December.
[From “The Daily Telegraph,” January 19, 1871.]“NOTRE DAME DE PARIS.”
To the Editor of “The Daily Telegraph.”
Sir: It may perhaps be interesting to some of your readers, in the present posture of affairs round Paris, to know, as far as I am able to tell them, the rank which the Church of Notre Dame holds among architectural and historical monuments.
Nearly every great church in France has some merit specialto itself; in other countries, one style is common to many districts; in France, nearly every province has its unique and precious monument.
But of thirteenth-century Gothic—the most perfect architectural style north of the Alps—there is, both in historical interest, and in accomplished perfectness of art, oneuniquemonument—the Sainte Chapelle of Paris.
As examples of Gothic, ranging from the twelfth to the fourteenth century, the cathedrals of Chartres, Rouen, Amiens, Rheims, and Bourges, form a kind of cinque-foil round Notre Dame of Paris, of which it is impossible to say which is the more precious petal; but any of those leaves would be worth a complete rose of any other country’s work except Italy’s. Nothing else in art, on the surface of the round earth, could represent any one of them, if destroyed, or be named as of any equivalent value.
Central among these, as in position, so in its school of sculpture; unequalled in that specialty but by the porch of the north transept of Rouen, and, in a somewhat latter school, by the western porches of Bourges; absolutely unreplaceable as a pure and lovely source of art instruction by any future energy or ingenuity, stands—perhaps, this morning, I ought rather to write, stood[138]—Notre Dame of Paris.
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,J. Ruskin.
[From “The Pall Mall Gazette,” March 16, 1872.]MR. RUSKIN’S INFLUENCE: A DEFENCE.
To the Editor of “The Pall Mall Gazette.”
Sir: I receive many letters just now requesting me to take notice of the new theory respecting Turner’s work put forward by Dr. Liebreich in his recent lecture at the Royal Institution.[139]Will you permit me to observe in your columns, once for all, that I have no time for the contradiction of the various foolish opinions and assertions which from time to time are put forward respecting Turner or his pictures? All that is necessary for any person generally interested in the arts to know about Turner was clearly stated in “Modern Painters” twenty years ago, and I do not mean to state it again, nor to contradict any contradictions of it. Dr. Liebreich is an ingenious and zealous scientific person. The public may derive much benefit from consulting him on the subject of spectacles—not on that of art.
As I am under the necessity of writing to you at any rate, may I say further that I wish your critic of Mr. Eastlake’s book[140]on the Gothic revival would explain what he means bysaying that my direct influence on architecture is always wrong, and my indirect influence right; because, if that be so, I will try to exercise only indirect influence on my Oxford pupils. But the fact to my own notion is otherwise. I am proud enough to hope, for instance, that I have had some direct influence on Mr. Street; and I do not doubt but that the public will have more satisfaction from his Law Courts[141]than they have had from anything built within fifty years. But I have had indirect influence on nearly every cheap villa-builder between this[142]and Bromley; and there is scarcely a public-house near the Crystal Palace but sells its gin and bitters under pseudo-Venetian capitals copied from the Church of the Madonna of Health or of Miracles. And one of my principal notions for leaving my present house is that it is surrounded everywhere by the accursed Frankenstein monsters of,indirectly, my own making.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,John Ruskin.
March15.
[From “The Pall Mall Gazette,” March 21, 1872.]MR. RUSKIN’S INFLUENCE: A REJOINDER.
To the Editor of “The Pall Mall Gazette.”
Sir: I am obliged by your critic’s reply to my question, but beg to observe that, meaning what he explains himself to have meant, he should simply have said that my influence on temper was right, and on taste wrong; the influence being in both cases equally “direct.” On questions of taste I will not venture into discussion with him, but must be permitted tocorrect his statement that I have persuaded any one to prefer Venetian to English Gothic. I have stated that Italian—chiefly Pisan and Florentine—Gothic is the noblest school of Gothic hitherto existent, which is true; and that one form of Venetian Gothic deserves singular respect for the manner of its development. I gave the mouldings and shaft measurements of that form,[143]and to so little purpose, that I challenge your critic to find in London, or within twenty miles of it, a single Venetian casement built on the sections which I gave as normal. For Venetian architecture developed out of British moral consciousness I decline to be answerable. His accusation that I induced architects to study sculpture more, and what he is pleased to call “expressional character” less, I admit. I should be glad if he would tell me what, before my baneful influence began to be felt, the expressional character of our building was; and I will reconsider my principles if he can point out to me, on any modern building either in London or, as aforesaid, within twenty miles round, a single piece of good sculpture of which the architect repents, or the public complains.
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,J. Ruskin.
March21.
[From “The Liverpool Daily Post,” June 9, 1877.]MODERN RESTORATION[144]
Venice, 15th April, 1877.
My Dear Sir: It is impossible for any one to know the horror and contempt with which I regard modern restoration—but it is so great that it simply paralyzes me in despair,—and in the sense of such difference in all thought and feeling between me and the people I live in the midst of, almost makes it useless for me to talk to them. Of course all restoration is accursed architect’s jobbery, and will go on as long as they can get their filthy bread by such business. But things are worse here than in England: you have little there left to lose—here, every hour is ruining buildings of inestimable beauty and historical value—simply to keep stone-lawyers[145]at work. I am obliged to hide my face from it all, and work at other things, or I should die of mere indignation and disgust.
Ever truly yours,J. Ruskin.
[From “The Kidderminster Times,” July 28, 1877.]RIBBESFORD CHURCH.
Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire,July24, 1877.
To the Editor of “The Kidderminster Times.”
Sir: It chanced that, on the morning of the Sunday, when the appearances of danger in the walls of Ribbesford Church began seriously to manifest themselves (according to the report in your columns of the 21st inst.),[146]I was standing outside of the church, listening to the singing of the last hymn as the sound came through the open door (with the Archer Knight sculptured above it), and showing to the friend who had brought me to the lovely place the extreme interest of the old perpendicular traceries in the freehand working of the apertures.
Permit me to say, with reference to the proposed restoration of the church, that no modern architect, no mason either, can, or would if they could, “copy” those traceries. They will assuredly put up with geometrical models in their place, which will be no more like the old traceries than a Kensington paper pattern is like a living flower. Whatever else is added or removed, those traceries should be replaced as they are, and left in reverence until they moulder away. If they are already too much decayed to hold the glass safely (which I do not believe), any framework which may be necessary can be arranged to hold the casements within them, leaving their bars entirely disengaged, and merely kept from falling by iron supports. But if these are to be “copied,” why in the world cannot the congregation pay for a new and original church, to display the genius and wealth of the nineteenth century somewhere else, and leave the dear old ruin to grow gray by Severn side in peace?
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,J. Ruskin.
CIRCULAR[147]RESPECTING MEMORIAL STUDIES OF ST. MARK’S,VENICE, NOW IN PROGRESS UNDER MR. RUSKIN’S DIRECTION.
This circular will be given to visitors to the Old Water-color Society’s Exhibition, Pall Mall East, or on application to the Fine Art Society,148New Bond Street.
My friends have expressed much surprise at my absence from the public meetings called in defence of St. Mark’s. They cannot, however, be too clearly certified that I am now entirely unable to take part in exciting business, or even, without gravedanger, to allow my mind to dwell on the subjects which, having once been dearest to it, are now the sources of acutest pain. The illness which all but killed me two years ago[148]was not brought on by overwork, but by grief at the course of public affairs in England, and of affairs, public and private alike, in Venice; the distress of many an old and deeply regarded friend there among the humbler classes of the city being as necessary a consequence of the modern system of centralization, as the destruction of her ancient civil and religious buildings.
How far forces of this national momentum may be arrested by protest, or mollified by petition, I know not; what in either kind I have felt myself able to do has been done two years since, in conjunction with one of the few remaining representatives of the old Venetian noblesse.[149]All that now remains for me is to use what time may be yet granted for such record as hand and heart can make of the most precious building in Europe, standing yet in the eyes of men and the sunshine of heaven.
The drawing of the first two arches of the west front, now under threat of restoration, which, as an honorary member of the Old Water-color Society, I have the privilege of exhibiting in its rooms this year, shows with sufficient accuracy the actual state of the building, and the peculiar qualities of its architecture.[150]The principles of that architecture are analyzed at length in the second volume of the “Stones of Venice,” and the whole façade described there with the best care I could, in hope of directing the attention of English architects to the forms of Greek sculpture which enrich it.[151]The words have been occasionally read for the sound of them; and perhaps,when the building is destroyed, may be some day, with amazement, perceived to have been true.
In the mean time, the drawing just referred to, every touch of it made from the building, and left as the color dried in the spring mornings of 1877, will make clear some of the points chiefly insisted on in the “Stones of Venice,” and which are of yet more importance now.[152]Of these, the first and main ones are the exquisite delicacy of the work and perfection of its preservation to this time. It seems to me that the English visitor never realizes thoroughly what it is that he looks at in the St. Mark’s porches: its glittering confusion in a style unexampled, its bright colors, its mingled marbles, produce on him no real impression of age, and its diminutive size scarcely any of grandeur. It looks to him almost like a stage scene, got up solidly for some sudden festa. No mere guide-book’s passing assertion of date—this century or the other—can in the least make him even conceive, and far less feel, that he is actually standing before the very shafts and stones that were set on their foundations here while Harold the Saxon stood by the grave of the Confessor under the fresh-raised vaults of the first Norman Westminster Abbey, of which now a single arch only remains standing. He cannot, by any effort, imagine that those exquisite and lace-like sculptures of twined acanthus—every leaf-edge as sharp and fine as if they were green weeds fresh springing in the dew, by the Pan-droseion[153]—were, indeed, cut and finished to their perfect grace while the Norman axes were hewing out rough zigzags and dentils round the aisles of Durham and Lindisfarne. Or nearer, in what is left of our own Canterbury—it is but an hour’s journey in pleasant Kent—you may compare, almost as if you looked from one to the other, the grim grotesque of the block capitals in the crypt with the foliage of these flexile ones, and with their marbledoves—scarcely distinguishable from the living birds that nestle between them. Or, going down two centuries (for the fillings of the portico arches were not completed till after 1204), what thirteenth-century work among our gray limestone walls can be thought of as wrought in the same hour with that wreath of intertwined white marble, relieved by gold, of which the tenderest and sharpest lines of the pencil cannot finely enough express the surfaces and undulations? For indeed, without and within, St. Mark’s is not, in the real nature of it, a piece of architecture, but a jewelled casket and painted reliquary, chief of the treasures in what were once the world’s treasuries of sacred things, the kingdoms of Christendom.
A jewelled casket, every jewel of which was itself sacred. Not a slab of it, nor a shaft, but has been brought from the churches descendants of the great Seven of Asia, or from the Christian-Greek of Corinth, Crete, and Thrace, or the Christian-Israelite in Palestine—the central archivolt copied from that of the church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the opposing lions or phœnixes of its sculptures from the treasury of Atreus and the citadel of Tyre.
Thus, beyond all measure of value as a treasury of art, it is also, beyond all other volumes, venerable as a codex of religion. Just as the white foliage and birds on their golden ground are descendants, in direct line, from the ivory and gold of Phidias, so the Greek pictures and inscriptions, whether in mosaic or sculpture, throughout the building, record the unbroken unity of spiritual influence from the Father of light—or the races whose own poets had said “We also are his offspring”—down to the day when all their gods, not slain, but changed into new creatures, became the types to them of the mightier Christian spirits; and Perseus became St. George, and Mars St. Michael, and Athena the Madonna, and Zeus their revealed Father in Heaven.
In all the history of human mind, there is nothing so wonderful, nothing so eventful, as this spiritual change. So inextricably is it interwoven with the most divine, the most distant threads of human thought and effort, that while none of thethoughts of St. Paul or the visions of St. John, can be understood without our understanding first the imagery familiar to the Pagan worship of the Greeks; on the other hand, no understanding of the real purport of Greek religion can be securely reached without watching the translation of its myths into the message of Christianity.
Both by the natural temper of my mind, and by the labor of forty years given to this subject in its practical issues on the present state[154]of Christendom, I have become, in some measure, able both to show and to interpret these most precious sculptures; and my health has been so far given back to me that if I am at this moment aided, it will, so far as I can judge, be easily possible for me to complete the work so long in preparation. There will yet, I doubt not, be time to obtain perfect record of all that is to be destroyed. I have entirely honest and able draughtsmen at my command; my own resignation[155]of my Oxford Professorship has given me leisure; and all that I want from the antiquarian sympathy of England is so much instant help as may permit me, while yet in available vigor of body and mind, to get the records made under my own overseership, and registered for sufficient and true. The casts and drawings which I mean to have made will be preserved in a consistent series in my Museum at Sheffield, where I have freehold ground enough to build a perfectly lighted gallery for their reception. I have used the words “I want,” as if praying this thing for myself. It is not so. If only some other person could and would undertake all this, Heaven knows how gladly I would leave the task to him. But there is no one else at present able to do it: if not now by me, it can never be done more.—And so I leave it to the reader’s grace.
J. Ruskin.
All subscriptions to be sent to Mr. G. Allen, Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent.
POSTSCRIPT.[156]
By the kindness of the Society of Painters in Water-colors I am permitted this year, in view of the crisis of the fate of the façade of St. Mark’s, to place in the exhibition-room of the Society ten photographs, illustrative of its past and present state. I have already made use of them, both in my lectures at Oxford and in the parts ofFors Clavigeraintended for Art-teaching at my Sheffield Museum; and all but the eighth are obtainable from my assistant, Mr. Ward (2 Church Terrace, Richmond), who is my general agent for photographs, either taken under my direction (as here, Nos. 4, 9, and 10), or specially chosen by me for purposes of Art Education. The series of views here shown are all perfectly taken, with great clearness, from the most important points, and give, consecutively, complete evidence respecting the façade.
They are arranged in the following order:
This last photograph is not of St. Mark’s but is of the inscription which I discovered, in 1877, on the Church of St. James of the Rialto. It is of the 9th or 10th century (according to the best antiquarians of Venice), and is given in this series, first, to confirm the closing paragraph in my notes on the Prout drawingsin Bond Street;[157]and secondly to show the perfect preservation even of the hair-strokes in letters carved in the Istrian marble used at Venice a thousand years ago. The inscription on the cross is—
“Sit crux vera salus huic tua Christe loco.”(Be Thy Cross, O Christ, the true safety of this place.)
“Sit crux vera salus huic tua Christe loco.”(Be Thy Cross, O Christ, the true safety of this place.)
“Sit crux vera salus huic tua Christe loco.”(Be Thy Cross, O Christ, the true safety of this place.)
And on the band beneath—
“Hoc circa templum sit jus mercantibus æquum,Pondera nec vergant nec sit conventio prava.”(Around this temple let the merchants’ law be just,Their weights true, and their contracts fair.)
“Hoc circa templum sit jus mercantibus æquum,Pondera nec vergant nec sit conventio prava.”(Around this temple let the merchants’ law be just,Their weights true, and their contracts fair.)
“Hoc circa templum sit jus mercantibus æquum,Pondera nec vergant nec sit conventio prava.”(Around this temple let the merchants’ law be just,Their weights true, and their contracts fair.)
The bearing of this inscription on the relations of Antonio to Shylock may perhaps not be perceived by a public which now—consistently and naturally enough, but ominously—considers Shylock a victim to the support of the principles of legitimate trade, and Antonio a “speculator and sentimentalist.” From the series of photographs of St. Mark’s itself, I cannot but think even the least attentive observer must receive one strong impression—that of the singular preservation of the minutest details in its sculpture. Observe, this is a quite separate question from thestabilityof the fabric. In our northern cathedrals the stone, for the most part, moulders away; and the restorer usually replaces it by fresh sculpture, on the faces of walls of which the mass is perfectly secure. Here, at St. Mark’s, on the contrary, the only possible pretence for restoration has been, and is, thealleged insecurity of the masses of inner wall—the external sculptures remaining in faultless perfection, so far as unaffected by direct human violence. Both the Greek and Istrian marbles used at Venice are absolutely defiant of hypæthral influences, and the edges of their delicatest sculpture remain to this day more sharp than if they had been cut in steel—for then they would have rusted away. It is especially, for example, of this quality that I have painted the ornament of the St. Jean d’Acre pillars, No. 107, which the reader may at once compare with the daguerreotype (No. 108) beside it, which are exhibited, with the Prout and Hunt drawings, at the Fine Art Society’s rooms.[158]These pillars are known to be not later than the sixth century, yet wherever external violence has spared their decoration it is sharp as a fresh-growing thistle. Throughout the whole façade of St. Mark’s, the capitals have only here and there by casualty lost so much as a volute or an acanthus leaf, and whatever remains is perfect as on the day it was set in its place, mellowed and subdued only in color by time, but white still, clearly white; and gray, still softly gray; its porphyry purple as an Orleans plum, and the serpentine as green as a greengage. Note also, that in this throughout perfect decorated surface there is not a loose joint. The appearances of dislocation, which here and there look like yielding of masonry, are merely carelessness in the replacing or resetting of the marble armor at the different times when the front has been retouched—in several cases quite wilful freaks of arrangement. The slope of the porphyry shaft, for instance, on the angle at the left of my drawing, looks like dilapidation. Were it really so, the building would be a heap of ruins in twenty-four hours. These porches sustain no weight above—their pillars carry merely an open gallery; and the inclination of the red marble pilasters at the angle is not yielding at all, but an originally capricious adjustment of the marble armor. It will be seen that the investing marbles between the arch and pilaster are cut to the intended inclination, which brings the latter nearly into contact with the upper archivolt; the appearance of actual contact being caused by the projection of the dripstone. There are, indeed, one or two leaning towers in Venice whose foundationshave partly yielded; but ifanythingwere in danger on St. Mark’s Place, it would be the campanile—three hundred feet high—and not the little shafts and galleries within reach—too easy reach—of the gaslighter’s ladder. And the only dilapidations I have myself seen on this porch, since I first drew it forty-six years ago, have been, first, those caused by the insertion of the lamps themselves, and then the breaking away of the marble net work of the main capital by the habitual clattering of the said gaslighter’s ladder against it. A piece of it which I saw so broken off, and made an oration over to the passers-by in no less broken Italian, is in my mineral cabinet at Brantwood.
Before leaving this subject of the inclined angle, let me note—usefully, though not to my present purpose—that the entire beauty of St. Mark’s campanile depends on this structure, there definitely seen to be one of real safety. This grace and apparent strength of the whole mass would be destroyed if the sides of it were made vertical. In Gothic towers, the same effect is obtained by the retiring of the angle buttresses, without actual inclination of any but the coping lines.
In the Photograph No. 5 the slope of the angles in the correspondent portico, as it stood before restoration, is easily visible and measurable, the difference being, even on so small a scale, full the twentieth of an inch between the breadth at base and top, at the angles, while the lines bearing the inner arch are perfectly vertical.
There was, indeed, as will be seen at a glance, some displacement of the pillars dividing the great window above, immediately to the right of the portico. But these pillars were exactly the part of the south front which carried no weight. The arch above them is burdened only by its own fringes of sculpture; and the pillars carried only the bit of decorated panelling, which is now bent—not outwards, as it would have been by pressure, but inwards. The arch has not subsided; it was always of the same height as the one to the right of it (the Byzantine builders throwing their arches always in whatever lines they chose); nor is there a single crack or displacement in the sculpture of the investing fringe.
In No. 3 (to the right hand in the frame) there is dilapidation and danger enough certainly; but that is wholly caused bythe savage and brutal carelessness with which the restored parts are joined to the old. The photograph bears deadly and perpetual witness against the system of “making work,” too well known now among English as well as Italian operatives; but it bears witness, as deadly, against the alleged accuracy of the restoration itself. The ancient dentils are bold, broad, and cut with the free hand, as all good Greek work is; the new ones, little more than half their size, are cut with the servile and horrible rigidity of the modern mechanic.
This quality is what M. Meduna, in the passage quoted from his defence of himself[159]in theStandard, has at once the dulness and the audacity actually to boast of as “plus exacte”!
Imagine a Kensington student set to copy a picture by Velasquez, and substituting a Nottingham lace pattern, traced with absolute exactness, for the painter’s sparkle and flow and flame, and boasting of his improvements as “plus exacte”! That is precisely what the Italian restorer does forhisoriginal; but, alas! he has the inestimable privilege also of destroying the original as he works, and putting his student’s caricature in its place! Nor are any words bitter or contemptuous enough to describe the bestial stupidities which have thus already replaced the floor of the church, in my early days the loveliest in Italy, and the most sacred.
In the Photograph No. 7 there is, and there only,onepiece of real dilapidation—the nodding pinnacle propped on the right. Those pinnacles stand over the roof gutters, and their bracket supports are, of course, liable to displacement, if the gutters get choked by frost or otherwise neglected. The pinnacle is not ten feet high, and can be replaced and secured as easily as the cowl on a chimney-pot. The timbers underneath were left there merely to give the wished-for appearance of repairs going on. They defaced the church front through the whole winter of 1876. I copied the bills stuck on them one Sunday, and they are printed in the 78th number ofFors Clavigera, the first being the announcement of the Reunited agencies for information on all matters of commercial enterprise and speculation, and the last the announcement of the loss of a cinnamon-colored little bitch,with rather long ears (coll’ orecchie piùtosto lunghe). I waited through the winter to see how much the Venetians really cared for the look of their church; but lodged a formal remonstrance in March with one of the more reasonable civic authorities, who presently had them removed. The remonstrance ought, of course, to have come from the clergy; but they contented themselves with cutting flower-wreaths on paper to hang over the central door at Christmas-time. For the rest, the pretence of rottenness in the walls is really too gross to be answered. There are brick buildings in Italy by tens of thousands, Roman, Lombardic, Gothic, on all scales and in all exposures. Which of them has rotted or fallen, but by violence? Shall the tower of Garisenda stand, and the Campanile of Verona, and the tower of St. Mark’s, and, forsooth, this little fifty feet of unweighted wall be rotten and dangerous?
Much more I could say, and show; but the certainty of the ruin of poor Bedlamite Venice is in her own evil will, and not to be averted by any human help or pleading. HerSabba delle streghehas truly come; and in her own words (seeFors, letter 77th): “Finalmente la Piazza di S. Marco sarà invasa e completamente illuminata dalle Fiamme di Belzebù. Perchè ilSabbapossa riuscire più completo, si raccomanda a tutti gli spettatori di fischiare durante le fiamme come anime dannate.”
Meantime, in what Saturday pause may be before this Witches’ Sabbath, if I have, indeed, any English friends, let them now help me, and my fellow-workers, to get such casts, and colorings, and measurings, as may be of use in time to come. I am not used to the begging tone, and will not say more than that what is given me will go in mere daily bread to the workers, and that next year, if I live, there shall be some exposition of what we have got done, with the best account I can render of its parts and pieces. Fragmentary enough they must be,—poor fallen plumes of the winged lion’s wings,—yet I think I can plume a true shaft or two with them yet.
Some copies of the second edition of this circular had printed at the top of its last and otherwise blank page the words, “Present State of Subscription Lists:—,” a printer’s error, mistaken by some readers for a piece of dry humor.Subscriptions were collected by Mr. G. Allen, as above intimated, andalso by Mr. F. W. Pullen, secretary to the Ruskin Society of Manchester, under the authority of the following letter, which was printed and distributed by him: “November29, 1879.—Dear Mr. Pullen: I am very glad to have your most satisfactory letter, and as gladly give you authority to receive subscriptions for drawings and sculptures of St. Mark’s. Mr. Bunney’s large painting of the whole west façade, ordered by me a year and a half ago, and in steady progress ever since, is to be completed this spring. It was a £500 commission for the Guild, but I don’t want to have to pay it with Guild capital. I have the power of getting casts, also, in places where nobody else can, and have now energy enough to give directions, but can no more pay for them out of my own pocket. Ever gratefully yours, J. R. As a formal authority, this had better have my full signature—John Ruskin.” In a further letter to Manchester on the subject, Mr. Ruskin wrote as follows: “It is wholly impossible for me at present to take any part in the defence—at last, though far too late—undertaken by the true artists and scholars of England—of the most precious Christian building in Europe; ... nor is there any occasion that I should, if only those who care for me will refer to what I have already written, and will accept from me the full ratification of all that was said by the various speakers, all without exception men of the most accurate judgment and true feeling, at the meeting held in Oxford. All that I think it necessary for you to lay, directly from myself, before the meeting you are about to hold, is the explicit statement of two facts of which I am more distinctly cognizant from my long residences in Italy at different periods, and in Venice during these last years, than any other person can be—namely, the Infidel—(malignantly and scornfully Infidel and anti-religionist) aim of Italian ‘restoration’—and the totality of the destruction it involves, of whatever it touches.” So again, in a second and despairing letter, he wrote: “You cannot be too strongly assured of the total destruction involved, in the restoration of St. Mark’s.... Then the plague of it all is, What can you do? Nothing would be effectual, but the appointment of a Procurator of St. Mark’s, with an enormous salary, dependent on the Church’s being let alone. What you can do by a meeting at Manchester, I have no notion. The only really practical thing that I can think of would be sending me lots of money to spend in getting all the drawings I can of the old thing before it goes. I don’t believe we can save it by any protests.” See theBirmingham Daily Mail, Nov. 27, 1879. The reader is also referred to “Fors Clavigera,” New Series, Letter the Fourth, pp. 125-6.The meeting in Oxford alluded to above was held in the Sheldonian Theatre on November 15, 1879. Amongst the principal speakers were the Dean of Christ Church (in the chair), Dr. Acland, the Professor of Fine Art (Mr. W. B. Richmond), Mr. Street, Mr. William Morris, and Mr. Burne Jones.
Some copies of the second edition of this circular had printed at the top of its last and otherwise blank page the words, “Present State of Subscription Lists:—,” a printer’s error, mistaken by some readers for a piece of dry humor.
Subscriptions were collected by Mr. G. Allen, as above intimated, andalso by Mr. F. W. Pullen, secretary to the Ruskin Society of Manchester, under the authority of the following letter, which was printed and distributed by him: “November29, 1879.—Dear Mr. Pullen: I am very glad to have your most satisfactory letter, and as gladly give you authority to receive subscriptions for drawings and sculptures of St. Mark’s. Mr. Bunney’s large painting of the whole west façade, ordered by me a year and a half ago, and in steady progress ever since, is to be completed this spring. It was a £500 commission for the Guild, but I don’t want to have to pay it with Guild capital. I have the power of getting casts, also, in places where nobody else can, and have now energy enough to give directions, but can no more pay for them out of my own pocket. Ever gratefully yours, J. R. As a formal authority, this had better have my full signature—John Ruskin.” In a further letter to Manchester on the subject, Mr. Ruskin wrote as follows: “It is wholly impossible for me at present to take any part in the defence—at last, though far too late—undertaken by the true artists and scholars of England—of the most precious Christian building in Europe; ... nor is there any occasion that I should, if only those who care for me will refer to what I have already written, and will accept from me the full ratification of all that was said by the various speakers, all without exception men of the most accurate judgment and true feeling, at the meeting held in Oxford. All that I think it necessary for you to lay, directly from myself, before the meeting you are about to hold, is the explicit statement of two facts of which I am more distinctly cognizant from my long residences in Italy at different periods, and in Venice during these last years, than any other person can be—namely, the Infidel—(malignantly and scornfully Infidel and anti-religionist) aim of Italian ‘restoration’—and the totality of the destruction it involves, of whatever it touches.” So again, in a second and despairing letter, he wrote: “You cannot be too strongly assured of the total destruction involved, in the restoration of St. Mark’s.... Then the plague of it all is, What can you do? Nothing would be effectual, but the appointment of a Procurator of St. Mark’s, with an enormous salary, dependent on the Church’s being let alone. What you can do by a meeting at Manchester, I have no notion. The only really practical thing that I can think of would be sending me lots of money to spend in getting all the drawings I can of the old thing before it goes. I don’t believe we can save it by any protests.” See theBirmingham Daily Mail, Nov. 27, 1879. The reader is also referred to “Fors Clavigera,” New Series, Letter the Fourth, pp. 125-6.
The meeting in Oxford alluded to above was held in the Sheldonian Theatre on November 15, 1879. Amongst the principal speakers were the Dean of Christ Church (in the chair), Dr. Acland, the Professor of Fine Art (Mr. W. B. Richmond), Mr. Street, Mr. William Morris, and Mr. Burne Jones.