Industry and perseverance

The Nature of Gothic, the chapter in The Stones of Venice/John Ruskin described by Kenneth Clark (father of Alan) as one of the noblest things written in the 19th century: "Even now, when the ideas it expressed are accepted and the cause it advocates is dead, we cannot read it without a thrill, without a sudden resolution to reform the world."

A dense read: an analysis of Gothic architecture and pattern with detailed instructions on how to interpret a Gothic building  Below: a painting of the west front of St Mark's by J W Bunney. Ruskin commissioned the painting as a strict architectural record. The artist apparently spent 600 days working on it.

"Lastly, Read the sculpture. Preparatory to reading it, you will have to discover whether it is legible (and, if legible it is neatly certain to be worth reading). On a good building, the sculpture is always so set, and on such a scale, that at the ordinary distance from which the edifice is seen, the sculpture shall be thoroughly intelligible and interesting...
... the criticism of the building is to be conducted precisely on the same principles as that of a book and it must depend on the knowledge, feeling , and not a  little on the industry and perseverance of the reader, whether, even in the case of the best works, he either perceive them to be great, or feel them to be entertaining."

Selling souls to the devil and decorative detail

Off to Faust this evening. An appropriate theme (perhaps) for Maundy Thursday: the temptation of selling your soul to the Devil. The loss of all moral compass.

A passage - fitting for the day - from Ruskin on San Marco, Venice: (found Stones of Venice: he would surely describe this as a 'word picture'.)

"Round the domes of its roof the light enters only through narrow apertures like large stars; and here and there a ray or two from some far away casement wanders into the darkness, and casts a narrow phosphoric stream upon the waves of marble that heave and fall in a thousand colours along the floor. What else there is of light is from torches, or silver lamps, burning ceaselessly in the recesses of the chapels; the roof sheeted with gold, and the polished walls covered with alabaster, give back at every curve and angle some feeble gleaming to the flames; and the glories round the heads of the sculptured saints flash out upon us as we pass them, and sink again into the gloom. Under foot and overhead, a continual succession of crowded images, one picture passing into another as in a dream; forms beautiful and terrible mix together; dragons and serpent, and ravening beasts of prey, and graceful birds that in the midst of them drink from running fountains and feed from vases of crystal; the passion and the pleasures of human life symbolised together, and the mystery of its redemption; for the mazes of interwoven lines and changeful pictures lead always at last to the Cross, lifted and carved in every place and upon every stone...."

Yesterday learned - from Ruskin - that there is an order in ornament. His list:
1. Abstract lines
2. Forms of earth (crystals)
3. Forms of water (waves)
4. Forms of fire (flames and rays)
5. Forms of air (clouds)
6. Organic forms (shells)
7. Fish
8. Reptiles and snakes
9. Vegetation A (stems and trunks)
10. Vegetation B (foliage)
11. Birds
12. Mammalian animals and man.

The power of lists. Particularly like 8. Reptiles and snakes. From reptiles and snakes come beauty and horror: the dragon a fusion of both (as above). Oddly symbolic to the Christian church, as Ruskin says.