Identifier: venicestones03rusk (find matches)
Title: The stones of Venice
Year: 1851 (1850s)
Authors: Ruskin, John, 1819-1900
Subjects: Architecture Architecture
Publisher: London, Smith, Elder, and co.
Contributing Library: Getty Research Institute
Digitizing Sponsor: Getty Research Institute

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, in its weariness, it cannot read. And on the other hand, weshall continually find, in other examples of work of the sameperiod, an unwholesome breadth or heaviness, which results fromthe mind having no longer any care for refinement or precision,nor taking any delight in delicate forms, but making all thingsblunted, cumbrous, and dead, losing at the same time the senseof the elasticity and spring of natural curves. It is as ifthe soul of man, itself severed from the root of its health, andabout to fall into corruption, lost the perception of life inall things around it; and could no more distinguish the waveof the strong branches, full of muscular strength and sanguinecirculation, from the lax bending of a broken cord, nor thesinuousness of the edge of the leaf, crushed into deep foldsby the expansion of its living growth, from the wrinkled con-traction of its decay.* Thus, in morals, there is a care for * There is a carious instance of this in the modern imitations of the Gothic II
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( m ) 11 ii i ■ C apital s I. EARLY RENAISSANCE. i» trifles which proceeds from love and conscience, and is mostholy; and a care for trifles which comes of idleness and fri-volity, and is most base. And so, also, there is a gravityproceeding from thought, which is most noble; and a gravityproceeding from dulness and mere incapability of enjoyment,which is most base. Now, in the various forms assumed bythe later Gothic of Venice, there are one or two features which,under other circumstances, would not have been signs of de-cline ; but, in the particular manner of their occurrence here,indicate the fatal weariness of decay. Of all these features themost distinctive are its crockets and finials. § xiv. There is not to be found a single crocket or finial uponany part of the Ducal Palace built during the fourteenth century;and although they occur on contemporary, and on some muchearlier, buildings, they either indicate detached examples ofschools not properly Venetian, or are signs of

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