WRITTEN IN STONE: Ruskin and Venice

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this is our second year working with caliano as part of our lecture and education series um sa Venice is dedicated to restoring the art and architecture of Venice but we also

believe in developing programming to keep people interested in Venice from AAR um I'm delighted to have Octavia

with us today and she has she's um the recipient of fellowships from the McDow Colony the L House International and bur cliff in support of the research and

writing of light descending her biographical novel about John Ruskin she's the author of the bestselling historical novel series The Circle of Sarah and sa on us has a couple of other

events coming up soon on April 10th we have our masked ball and it's not quite like this and we have a ven Scala June 14th through 17

the final series or the final education event we have this year is a tour of the Eli Wilner frame shop on March 18th so if you're interested you can sign up

with Kim in the back thank you whena Venice had always drawn for rusin a confusing mixture of responses each subsequent return had

deepened his knowledge of The Battered yet dazzling creation risen from the mud flats of the Adriatic it was a landscape

wholly artificial utterly man-made anchored on peers of istrian pine in fortified mud flats a centuries long

cobbling together of precious stones and colored SMY and looted treasure Elusive and shimmering and rotting all at once

no one but Turner could convey the visual effects of its aquous setting the shifting light upon the sparkling silver or oily vescent Waters the Limitless

expanse of Luminosity sea reflected in sky and sky in Sea crowning or mirroring The Monuments along the Grand Canal Northern Lombard and Southern Arab

culture had collided here with the gothic their architectural Offspring now the more he looked the less he felt he knew he spent days

paging through ancient maps and cracked volumes in the vast and vastly contradictory resources of the library of St Marks the history of LA serenisima

and thus of its buildings was as twisted and convoluted as the progress of its Serpentine canals the story of venice's miraculous buildings the Zenith of

Gothic architecture could not be teased out through its innumerable State archives it must be read in its Stones tonight I'm going to talk about

John Ruskin and read a little as I just did from my biographical novel about him Ruskin of course was one of the great figures of the 19th century a truly

seminal thinker on Art architecture and social justice tonight we are going to look at his relationship with Venice which he thought the world's Supreme

architectural and cultural expression or has he said Venice was the history of all men not in a nutshell but in a nautilus

shell and here's John I love this portrait of him he's three and a half years old here this was painted by James northcoat and this is the Ruskin we're a

little more familiar with a particularly beautiful self-portrait uh done when he was 42 the life of John Ruskin exactly

mirrored that of Queen Victoria they were both born in 1819 he uh and died a year apart he in 1900 and she in

1901 his parents were Scottish but he was born rather late in their lives in London his father John James rusin was 34 when their only child was born and

his mother Margaret was 38 John was a Bright Child his early ability to see and observe and his fascination with what drawing and

painting captured and actually meant drove the early part of his career which was writing about what painting ought to do in his first book modern painters he

says the greatest picture is that which conveys to the mind of The Spectator the greatest number of the greatest ideas Ruskin always believed that jmw

Turner was the greatest of all painters and in fact the complete title of the first volume of modern painters because it grew to be five volumes over almost

20 years was Modern painters their superiority in the art of landscape painting to all the ancient Masters proved by the examples of the true the

beautiful and the intellectual by The Works of modern artists especially from those of jmw Turner Esquire r a by a

graduate of Oxford John was 24 years old when the book was published and his father did not want him to actually put his name on

it in case it was ridiculed it was not ridiculed 500 books were published and only 150 sold but the people who bought those copies were amongst the

intellectual and creative Elite of Britain people such as George Elliott uh woodsworth Charlotte Bronte Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning and so on so

he was on his way Ruskin had a decidedly bifurcated career the first half of which was largely devoted to thinking and writing and lecturing on art and architecture he

can be considered The Godfather of the Arts and Crafts movement and he was a great Advocate and help to the struggling young prer raphaelite painters much of the second half of his

career was devoted to issues of Social and economic Justice and educational and even religious reform in 1906 six years

after ruskin's death the incoming labor members of parliament were pulled as to whose books were most influential in their personal development and rosin's

books ranked first besting even those of the Bible Shakespeare Dickens Carlile and all other authors but

Venice Ruskin spent about 18 months of his life living in Venice it seems surprisingly little considering how it influenced him and how he influenced

others about it from Boyhood he had traveled every summer on the continent with his parents and the first time that he saw Venice he was 16 years old they stayed there for a

week and this is certainly a Turner it is Juliet and her nurse painted in 18 uh 36 Juliet is the bright figure in the

extreme foreground on the left hand side with her nurse and dark silhouette so in juliia and her nurse we see that Turner has moved our heroine from Verona to

Venice or a version of Venice um uh something that the critic of blackwoods magazine took great issue with the ridiculing of Juliet and her nurse

prompted an impassioned Outburst from 17-year-old John his first written defense of the man who was to be his lifelong hero and now we're going to look at

three Turner watercolors of Venice which Ruskin actually owned part of the enormous Treasure Trove of of um of Turner watercolors which uh rusin gave

to Oxford and which today if you go to the ashmolean and you ask to see them you can sit down with at a big table and actually handle them and go through them this is the Grand

Canal the Rea and the Academia as a 22-year-old Ruskin returned to Venice after furiously drawing all that he could see he felt

overwhelmed by his inability to capture the city he wrote to an Oxford friend I have put up my pencils rather sulkily by The Bu for this place is quite Beyond

everybody but Turner he returned in a later drawing trip spending September and October 1845 there a trip on which he made many of

his most beautiful and expressive record drawings Venice was very much under assault in ruskin's view by this time the austrians had nearly completed the

causeway from the mainland they had put in gas lighting and as he wrote in despair to his father after whitewashing

the does Palace they are scraping St Mark's clean off go all the Glorious old weather stains the rich Hues of the

marble which nature Mighty as she is has taken 10 centuries to bestow and it is misery for me to stop here but

every hour is destructive of what I most value and I must do what I can to save a little he was saving it of course by drawing it recording

[Applause] it particularly lovely window detail of kafas scari from that 1845 trip part of uh St Mark's Basilica um

showing the south side of the baptistry with a door which is now closed uh behind it and uh in the center there one of the famous Square pillars uh from

acre beloved of SE Venice and his gorgeous kazal luren of the kazal luren also called Palazo Corner ladan Ruskin said which

will I believe be felt At Last by all who examine it carefully to be the most beautiful palace in the whole extent of the Grand Canal this was what Raskin saw and

recorded in 1845 uh in 1867 the building became a municip office and was gradually stripped of the color and the detail

which rusin had cherished and if you know the building today it's right next door to this city hall the um uh enrio dandolo Palazo uh kazal oron today is

essentially a a plain white building it's been tremendously neutralized rustin's absolutely stunning uh study of

cadoro Marie tone owned the cador when Ruskin witnessed it during that 1845 visit being set upon by restorers chiseling off the very cabled ornament

that he was furiously attempting to draw the Prima ballerina was modernizing the house and selling off bits and pieces of kador including the huge interior marble

stair what which was said to have been the most Exquisite in all of Venice she had The Misfortune of hiring the same engineer from Romania GM Batista Muna

who was brutalizing San Marco uh Baron Frank kety L tried to gather what fragments that he could uh tile on also ripped out the columns for the

projecting interior balconies the balconies in the interior Courtyard and eight of those columns have found a home in Boston in the Isabella Stewart Gardener

Museum everything was for sale rusin himself by the way on a later visit was offered an entire Gothic building which he was told he could buy either intire

or stone by Stone he demed but the trip that mattered the most the trip that he had a true mission for was in fact his delayed wedding trip

to Venice with with this young Scottish wife Effie they spent two Winters there the first four months they lived there beginning in October 1849 were truly

revelatory to Ruskin but we're familiar with the sad end of the Republic Republic Napoleon seizing it in

1797 and sacking it U plundering it handing it over to the austrians a valiant but doomed Uprising was led by Daniel manin in March of

1848 in which the venetians recaptured the arsenale forced the austrians to abandon the islands and announc the reestablishment of the Venetian Republic

but a Siege and a bombardment ensued as well as a terrible Cher outbreak and the austrians reconquered Venice in August

1849 just 3 months before John and Effie visited here they are arriving Venice October 1849 the curved prow of their Gondola

slid directly into the doorway on the canal with a red sashed Porter always waiting to help them out upon the marble steps of the hotel Daniel their Suite of

rooms all high ceilinged pale guilt and crackled gray woodwork with shell pink silk upon the walls was up one floor on the piano noet and in crossing the marar

threshold one stepped into a world of ancient and Noble Venetian taste the site would serve admirably from John's dressing room he could see the golden colored brick of the Campanile in the

the Piaza of St Marks after 9 months apart they were again together and to Effie's eyes in the most romantic city in the world at

her insistence John had come to Perth to collect her after his return from the Alps there was no other way to qu the rumors about the disintegration of their new marriage he had scolded her bitterly

for this expectation ridiculing her childishness in a letter so severely that she would have felt shamed if in searching her conscience she found herself guilty of the least bit of catry

or base desire to display a long absent husband for her own instead of for the marriage's sake they were joined in Venice uh by

Charlotte Kerr who was a friend of Effie's uh from Perth and by John's servant George Hobbs in Venice the little party was

aligned with the occupying austrians from the first John had despised the fact of the rail line which now meanly anchored Venice to the mainland much to his satisfaction the new rail Terminus

built by the austrians had also been bombed by the austrians during The Siege their Gondola landed them at a city deeply divided between the beaten

Italian isimi and the Italian Austria con those members of the Venetian nobility who had sided with the austrians and acted as collaborators and

informants and there were quite simply almost no other English in the entire Lagoon they had all fled at the start of the 5-month Austrian bombardment and had not yet

returned once at the hotel Daniel John left to go out and walk the city the building which was the greatest in the world the does Palace was almost next

their hotel and unharmed by the recent action although a row of Austrian Cannon stood poised at it as threat but they had heard fearful reports of Destruction

and must revisit any number of pazi and church chur es to assure himself so Effie and Charlotte set out alone and by foot John Murray's guide book to the

sights in hand directly leaving the daneli they heard a trumpet sound voices indistinct but urgent carried from the petta in front of the dois palace and

they followed a small number of dark cloaked phenicians on the ponti Padia the straw Bridge they must cross to reach the Piaza they paused to gaze down

the side canal at the small roofed over Bridge of size leading to the old ducal prison in the Piaza itself nearly empty a few hours ago a curious scene was

being enacted in front of the great Basilica of St Marks a large cauldron had been set up in the center of the pavement in which a fire had been kindled Austrian soldiers formed a

semicircle around it as venetians watched both nearby and from the Sheltering Shadows of the arcades the soldiers passed wicker baskets of some

sort of slips of paper down their line in almost ceremonial precision and the final man emptied the contents of each basket Into The Cauldron stirring it

with a poker to ensure it burst into Flame the waving Air Above The Cauldron was dark with Ash in each deposit elicited a cacophony of groans shouts

and cheers from the crowd what is it Effie asked a nearby gentleman who turned to them she knew only a few words of Italian and charlot nun he was much

moved by the action of the fire and his distress marked his face L Mona Patria Sorina he told her and touching his hat

moved away it was man's money that printed by the short-lived Republic it was now worthless and its public burning an additional humiliation to the failed

Patriot cause a few notes fluttered around them driven by The Heat Of The Blaze and the breeze sweeping through the Piaza she blinked against the particles of Ash and bent and snatched

at one that nearly hurt hit her skirt it was a two L note she stared at it as she grasped it between pale thumb and forefinger crisp and unfolded the

defunct note bore the slightest singing along one blue edge she looked helplessly at Charlotte for direction and receiving none tucked it away in her guide book as

momento they were by the way in room 32 of the Daniel Ruskin Lov the Dan and stayed there quite a bit as to the scene that greeted them we

have just heard what Effie witnessed uh Ruskin wrote uh in a letter to a Parson friend back in England there is St Marx

on one side of you it is full of people with a band of some 50 soldiers playing Wales to them a great many of them the venetians are nearly starving they are

walking up and down in the sun to keep as warm as they can the others are there because they have nothing to do or will do nothing but they would murder all the

50 soldiers who are playing Wales to them if they could this cartoon shows one of the Innovative balloon bombs that the austrians used against Venice it was

designed by an Austrian first lieutenant in the artillery Charles pitka pitka was handsome Galant per perfectly respectful to both of the

Ruskin and soon became an escort for Effie and Charlotte Kerr the friend who had accompanied her to Venice the balloon bombs happily were mostly unsuccessful the wind actually drove

most of them back over the island in which pitka and his own men were bivaak uh pitka showed real interest in ruskin's work which was unusual in

itself and Pito was a fine draftsman Effie wrote to her father he is no common character although you will not think this a proof of it when I tell you that it was he who directed all the

bombs against Venice but I suppose he cried about it every day but was obliged to obey John took to him directly from his Exquisite drawings many of them

engineering ones plans of attack and plans of the Lagoon so finely finished that JN who you know is a First Rate judge was perfectly surprised by their delicacy and style and he is very useful

to John in getting him into barracks and guard rooms and palaces which before were closed to him Ruskin despised the new railway station he he hated all

railroads the austrians had torn down a Palazo two convents and two churches to build it and he was heartily glad when Austrian balloon bombs temporarily

destroyed it luckily Venice was not Gravely injured by the military action but Ruskin had written to Effie in April of that year upon learning of the

Austrian destru of several Italian towns if they knock down Venice I shall give up all architectural studies and keep to the Alps they can't knock down the

matter horn so what was he doing in Venice he wished to document its monuments for what would eventually become the three

volumes stones of Venice going to this den of iniquity Venice much against his father's wishes and his father underwrote everything Ruskin ever did

every trip he ever took every painting that he bought and it was terrifically hard for John to defy him because he was so dependent upon Him John James Ruskin

wanted John to stay in London and begin work on volume three of modern painters but John had the great need and desire to educate himself in Italian art and

architecture and actually saw the stones of Venice as a continuation of modern painters and not as a diversion from

it so John James grudgingly approved and financed the Expedition writing to his son go where Glory Waits thee Glory

indeed we are looking at one of ruskin's pocket notebooks this is kazal Lordan again there are two important quotes

about the stones of Venice which bear both repeating and reflection William Morris called on the nature of Gothic the piece nestled in

the heart of volume 2 one of the most important things written by the author and in Future Days will be considered as one of the very few necessary and

inevitable utterances of the century Morris by the way could be a tough critic of Ruskin calling volume

Five of modern painters mostly gamon but um to return to accolades uh Henry James said of the stones of Venice

Ruskin has made Venice his own and in doing so has made her the [Applause] world Ruskin applied himself at once to

measuring and drawing at the does Palace each of its hundreds of columns and capitals was unique and he wished to draw everyone it was not whole buildings but the fragments of ancient

architecture that most interested him the stone window casings and doorways arcaded passages fonts and mosaics and well heads much of this encrusted

decoration had been carried off from the great and plundered cities of Byzantium to Venice during the Crusades and had been assembled and installed seemingly at random in the great edifices of

church and state his goal was to record nothing less than the Essential Elements of each of the most important buildings of Venice and to do so he had literally

to scramble up and over roofs to reach chimney pots and spires no alpon climbing proved as rigorous as his solo ascents up vertical walls and the ginger

tracing of Pathways across tiled spines or lead spand roof expanses to reach the delicate Stone elements once gained he would rope himself to the object he

sought parapet or fretwork Pinnacle or freeze and proceed to detail its Contours in his sketch pad annotating the drawing with careful measurements from his spooling pocket line George

Hobbs or Domenico his recently engaged valet waited below ready with a whis Brom to brush off the soot and restore their Master's stress clothing to respectability he knew the venetians

thought him mad sometimes saw them gesticulating far below him though with a few Austrian zanzig he could speedily buy the blessing of a sexton or

caretaker to gain the access he needed in addition to the drawings he was making he had George carry his deera type apparatus which they set up

wherever he felt a useful image might be struck the act of drawing had always furthered his thinking and it did so now

he saw within a few days of arrival that this new Venetian book would have to be far more than a study of prominent men and the buildings they erected the

Venice he walked was the ruin of the greatest mertile Force history had known brought down by greed hubris and

corrupted religious ideals he recognized it as no less than a mirror spotted and tarnished but conveying glimmers of disquieting

veracity he knew it as a place that at its height was was very like his own England today in its Imperial Pride still his father John James had

grave misgivings about ruskin's attentions to Venice and John was forced to write to him I am sorry you are not at all interested in my antiquarianism but it would be foolish to abandon the

labor of two whole years now that it is just approaching completion I cannot write anything but what is in me and in me I never could write for the public I

never have written except under the conviction of a thing's being important holy irrespective of the Public's thinking it so too and all my power such

as it is would be lost the moment I tried to catch people by fine writing you know I promise them no romance I promise them

Stones speaking of stones really beautiful dear type of St Marks um this was taken by George Hobbs

at that first winter that uh rusin spent with Effie uh in Venice 1849 to 1850 uh George by the way is actually

his given name was John Hobbs but any male servant who came into the rusin household named John was immediately rechristened because there were already two John's in the house and to avoid

confusion they got new names was very interested in deger types and actually amassed a quite a large collection in his lifetime 320 of them some of which he purchased some of which

he took himself and others of which were taken by succession of his menservants as this one was well ruskin's palpable excitement at

what he is seeing and discovering of where his thoughts are taking him is thrilling to read he truly had the

ability to see the ocean in a drop of water here from his diary entry of January 10th 1850 the first trip with

Effie I saw in St Mark's today the entire derivation of the Byzantine from the Corinthian capital from the Byzantine comes the leaf freeze directly

the cornices of Murano St Mark's and Dand Doo's house are nothing but the leaves of a Byzantine imitation Corinthian unrolled and laid along then

he goes on with many pages of notes and observations and Tiny sketches supporting this discovery Venice was also important to Ruskin for shoring up his aesthetic

views particularly in railing against the art of the Renaissance as he says in one famous instance it is in Venice only that

effectual blows can be struck at the pestilent art of the Renaissance destroy its claims to admiration there and it can assert them

nowhere else why in Venice well there you had extraordinary examples of Byzantine and Gothic architecture cheek byel now In fairness uh Ruskin later in

life did admit some grudging admiration for certain Renaissance pazi lining the Grand Canal uh Ruskin also uh Venice was also

served by Ruskin in his labored rationalization of actually claiming that the greatness of venice's churches was more or less a Triumph of

protestantism why this one this one is one of the the difficult aspects of the stones of Venice in its original um editions because the Republic of Venice was of

course always in trouble with the Pope and had suffered four inct or sort of mass uh excommunication under four different popes for disobeying the

orders of the papacy and things started to go downhill for The Venetian Republic uh when it became an oligarchy that submitted to Rome it is actually easy to

forgive this kind of reasoning because Ruskin was in fact raised by Evangelical Christians his mother in particular had a morbid fear and even hatred of

Catholics and it took John decades to cast this off himself uh when he was older he actually ended up living for a while amongst some monks uh in the

monastery at Ai and if Madness hadn't been closed in in around him it is possible that he may even have converted Ruskin was always interested

in how power and piety was signaled by architecture the gothic style of architecture so gloriously on display in

Venice was to rusin a perfect conveyor of Imperial Grandeur the does Palace and he certainly and sometimes to his regret

furthered the adoption of aats Gothic as the preferred architectural style for governmental educational and institutional buildings erected by

Victorian Britain from London to Bombay the more Ruskin looked the more he saw the connection between Venice and Britain and it was a chilling connection

as he intones so strikingly in the opening words to the stones of Venice since first the Dominion of men was asserted over the ocean three

Thrones of Mark above all others have been set upon its Sands the Thrones of Ty Venice and England of the first of these great

powers only the Memory Remains of the second the ruin the third which inherits their greatness if it forget their

example may be led through prouder Eminence to less pied destruction two beautiful pages of illustrations

from the stones of Venice um 1851 um on the left here Cornus decoration and on the right capitals of

the convex group these are the kind of detailed studies that Ruskin did that prompted a later Observer to note that if Venice

ever were destroyed it could practically be reconstructed through ruskin's meticulous drawings well it wasn't entirely all work uh especially during the second winter that

Ruskin and Effie spent together in Venice Ruskin usually asked Effie to go out without him at night but during Carnaval in that second winter she wrote

to her mother I am rather tired today as I was up late last night John and I having taken it into our heads that we would mask and have some fun we hired a

couple of dominoes this are the big uh black enveloping cloaks we hired a couple of dominoes black with black masks and white gloves and reached the

square about 10 I laughed so that I could scarcely go on and John who was as Grave as possible did the thing capitally we found quantities of masks

in Dominos and fancy costumes of all kinds parading about and entering the cafes to throw Bon bonss they were having

fun but as we know um the 5-year marriage to Effie gray remain remained unconsummated Effie had hoped that going to Venice in the second year of her marriage would in fact signal the

beginning of the physical marriage but it did not however one can easily see from Reading Effie's letters that the time she spent with John in Venice was

much the happiest of their entire relationship due not only to the charms of laima but the fact that it was one of the few times that the Elder Ruskin were

not also with them one of ruskin's biographers John Bachelor actually posits and I think with cause that Ruskin displac sexual

drive found expression in his lust and love for Venice Venice becomes a love object for him certainly both in the stones of Venice and in letters to his

father he uses deeply sensual language to describe his attraction and attachment to the city he must eat it devour it Stone by Stone and certainly

no beloved ever caused its lover more pain than Venice caused Ruskin so let us consider ruskin's

Venice as difficult as it is for us to imagine a Venice was not universally admired by the Victorian traveler it was

altogether too ornate unexpected and Visually chaotic for many and perhaps it also offended Victorian moral sensibilities as well

as GJ Lynx ports out you might see it as a robber's den for everything in it was stolen the fact was that uh Venice although it always attracted a certain

number of pleasure-loving aristocrats did not entice the upper middle classes until the stones of Venice spelled out her charms and drove home the necessity

of experiencing this fabulous mishmash of architectural Styles and more oral lessons in person and even then it took a little time volume one of stones came

out in March 1851 and like the first volume of modern painters sold very few copies volumes two and three came out two years later in

1853 and then people began to take notice and of course that gem on the nature of Gothic was in volume 2 a reviewer in The Daily News noted that no

longer could Venice be looked at as an example of barbarous taste with St Mark's aass of ill-shaped Domes its

walls of brick encrusted with marble its chaotic disregard of cemetry in the details its confused hodgepodge of

classic moresque and Gothic Ruskin had proved that the Architects and the Builders of the Middle Ages were artists of profound and tender

feelings Ruskin called himself a foster child of Venice and he felt both responsible for and frustrated by it much of the frustration due to the fact

that the Republic had destroyed itself and he could not save the remaining architectural fragments of its illustrious past by his late 50s Ruskin was deeply

troubled by the influx of tourists that he thought himself accountable for during his long overwintering stay of 1876 to 77 he removed himself from the

Grand Hotel to the modest calina on the zat to escape those hordes who only milled about San Marco and never penetrated into any of the fascinating

CES or the narrow Backwater canals and in fact in his 1877 Guide to the pictures of the Academia he argues that people should actually be made to pay a

fee to enter Venice this is a cartoon from punch from January of 1880 it's entitled the Morris

dance around St Mark uh rusin is the large figure under the right wing of the Lion of St Mark he's in profile to us

and William Morris is opposite to him uh Morris is going like this you see him in a faint uh the bit of dog roll down at

the bottom pokes fun at those trying to prevent the restoration of San Marco rest restoration of course was often times the wholesale replacement not

conservation of ornament when rkin returned to Venice to overwinter there from 76 to 77 it was after an absence of 16 years he hadn't

been there since his last trip with Effie in 1852 now struggling with mental illness he was preoccupied with two other young

women St Ursula and Rose Lou ursul the Virgin martyr who is the subject of hauntingly beautiful paintings by kpao

in the Academia held rusin inthrall in his later years in 1858 Ruskin had met 10-year-old Rose latou and over the years proceeded to fall violently in

love with her an obsession which caused both of them great pain Rose had died in May 1875 when she was

27 and the virgin rose and the virgin Ursula became one love object for him here he is back

in London after that Venetian winter he's going to a newly opened Art Gallery the groer gallery on newbor

Street it was purpose-built and at Great expense as an art gallery contained the suspect innovation of a restaurant and had been held by several reviewers for

its Venetian at atmosphere as Ruskin approached the massive mahogany doors he wondered how sir's decorators had conjured

Venice Venice Ruskin was lately returned from nine months wandering that Hy ruin from glimmering September through the Dank and frosty depths of winter and out

again to the Brilliance of may he knew L anima for the fickle and painted mistress she was the Allure of glittering Mosaic and glinting water d

distracting the eye from the crumbling of rotten Stone the silent leeching of lime from ancient pazi stripped naked of their marble by mercenary austrians or

the rapacity of venetians themselves The Faded indecency of the hollow-eyed empty warehouses once Splendid with the world's Mercantile Treasures thank God back in the 40s and

50s he had been there to document what he could he had made notebook after notebook of measured drawings delicate skes of marble and Limestone tracery whole aspects of buildings before they

fell to the brutal hands of the restorers and were spoiled forever and what was left carted away booty taken from this greatest repository of booty

doorways and arav volts prized out window jams poery rondels well heads downspouts even chimney pots or wrenched out crated up and shipped away for the

delectation of American Oil magnets and liver pool button manufacturers this very groener Gallery doorway had been ripped from the main

portal of Santa Luchia in Venice it wasn't his last trip to Venice but it was his last productive one he writes much about Venice in the

Brantwood diary that diary in which he documents his own psychotic break in 1878 as he slipped into the

abyss his final book about Venice was St Mark's rest a selective guide book to the city written during that terrible winter stay of 1876 to 77 when he was

dipping in and out of Madness and hallucinating about Rose and St Ursula it is an eccentric book but one which I relish not least for the fact that he

gives detailed instructions on how to take a one pound Bo block of gray a cheese and carve it into one of the capitals of the petta

as Ruskin says there is nothing like a little work with the fingers to teach the eyes and it is with St Mark's rest that I would like to leave us the full title

to the book is St Mark's rest the history of Venice written for the help of the few Travelers who still care for her

monuments I'm proud to be in the company tonight of so many who answer that description thank you for having me if you have any questions or comments

I'd be happy to entertain them and do my best to answer yes thank you I just wondered if he had any kind of relationship with Isabel

Stewart they never met um they didn't their their real contact was actually through Charles Elliot Orton who was a very dear and great friend of Ruskin and

his literary executor and is Isabella Stewart Gardner and Charles uh Norton Elliott knew each other in fact she went to his lectures about Dante because she started in antiquarianism by collecting

early additions of Dante so they had a connection there but they actually never met themselves it was her husband Jack who bought the columns

right yes uh after along a legal case Emma Thompson is producing a play that she had this legal case with George mury who wrot the C correct I saw yes which

was wonderful in fact I have the play in my pocket I love were you in it I saw it right and I just loved it so much that I looked for the right yeah her her film

is he'll her film will be released I believe uh in the United States in April it's called Effy gray it's about the the rusin marriage right and Ms

yes anyone else how do you feel R uh the question was how do I feel about uh the Ruskin marriage and how he

treated Effie so unfly um it's that's a deep question it is literally uh the topic of another talk which uh you'd have to come to the

Boston e to hear in April but uh it's called unlucky in love it it is it is a deep and complex subject rusin was a very good man he was out of his emotional depth in his

marriage unfortunately during his marriage he was often times at his worst um and as I said unfortunately it it it's it's it's a it's a question it's obviously something that I I cover in

the novel but it is a question that really deserves its its own talk because it is deep but he was unfortunately as I said unequipped uh probably to to have

wed anyone perhaps he was repressed person but with his parents being so exactly exactly it was very it was

very difficult for him to defy his parents different parents even in the 19th century some people might have just turned their head the other way right

and he maybe because he wrote so passionately like treating Venice as a lover you almost wonder if he had maybe

some desire that he felt maybe Beyond architecture that he saw in a person that he wasn't able to take to the next

step he was a man of great Passion absolutely so thank you

anyone else I think he would have been less wrer arti he successful person absolutely could that

absolutely could be the truth you're right there was one over here Turner and Whistler were two of the best if not the

best 19th century British painters how could he adore one and Li the

other yes um well part of it really has to to do with um is when I I talk about the impassioned uh defense that that

rusin wrote uh when he was 17 years old defending Turner um he calls any others who attempt to approach Turner

fluttering moths and which was really very prenti because of course what was whistler's little emblem is monogram was a butterfly um and I think later on I

mean if certainly if you look at the object of the the the the Lial case the wher Lial case which is nocturn and blue and gold the falling rocket you you see

um something which is looks to our eyes extremely turneresque but W which to rusin looked like somebody trying to

imitate that that freedom without having earned it so it was It was obviously difficult it and and do do bear in mind

that this was late in 's life and he was struggling with mental illness um so there there is a lot of uh supporting evidence around

that yes you refer to rusin's mental illness can you tell us anything about it

it the treatment of mental illness of course was just at its infancy the only drugs that really had were uh stimulants and sedatives chloral you know was one

of the the sedatives that they would administer and um it it is it is hard for us to know today uh what he may have

been uh diagnosed with possibly uh with bipolar um syndrome possibly something else it it's just hindsight makes it

very very difficult there was just obviously such a limited uh Pharmacy available for treatment there yes did bin comment

upon p in other words some of the most Inc that's right did he have ACH

did of no he yes of course he did and and when he when he draws you know long views of the Grand Canal of course he includes the the wonders of of of

Renaissance architecture he his his issue with it was the what he saw as a cold and calculating classicism the the

almost the mechanical quality of it um as opposed to the ru Hune um vibrant uh flawed

enthusiastic uh Byzantine and and Gothic work and he wanted the hand of the Workman to be shown at at every moment

and that was tremendously important to him so uh and and it was mirrored in painting too of course late in life you

know he had kind of a uh an amazing um he called it his his Veron crash is Queen of Sheba crash he he went back to see a verene and Terin which he had

earlier condemned and he looked at it and he saw what vereni was trying to do so he he he could in fact see the

Beauties there but he just in comparison to the gothic uh with all of its imperfections it was the personality the spirituality that he saw in Gothic

architecture that made him so deeply enthusiastic about it well I thank you very much for your attention thank you

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