Ruskin and the gothic revival: his research on Venetian architecture

Resource type
Book chapter
Creator (person)
Hewison, Robert
Date published
2017
Abstract
Ruskin's study of Venetian architecture, art and culture, The Stones of Venice, published in three volumes between 1851 and 1853, was not intended to be a history as we would now understand it. It was a moral argument, and a political intervention. As Elizabeth Helsinger has argued in an essay on Ruskin's historiography: 'The historical account of Venetian architecture in The Stones of Venice is reshaped throughout by an extrahistorical intention: to celebrate medieval art and values and condemn, on moral as well as aes­ thetic grounds, Renaissance Italy and nineteenth-century England/1 It was also a further contribution, following on from The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849), to a contemporary debate in Britain about the right direction for the Gothic Revival.
Book title
Ruskin's Artists: studies in the Victorian visual economy
Editor
Hewison, Robert
Pagination
53-69
Publisher
Taylor and Francis
Official URL
DOI