Art: A Ruskin Anthology |
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Angelico arch architects architecture artist Athena beautiful believe blue bright building carve cathedral century Chace character chiaroscuro clouds color Correggio Crystal Palace dark decoration delicate delight drawing England engraving entirely expression exquisite eyes feel Fésole finished Giorgione Giottesque Giotto gold golden Gothic GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE graceful Greek Griffith hand heart Herne Hill human imagination John Ruskin landscape art Leonardo less light lines living Lombard look lovely marble masters merely Michael Angelo mind Modern Painters mountain nations nature ness never noble once ornament painting Palace passion Paths Pentelici perfect Phidias picture piece pillars porphyry Pre-Raphaelites precious pure purple Raphael religious Rembrandt rightly Ruskin sculpture seen sense shadow Splügen Splügen Pass Stones of Venice strength strong style sunshine tenderness thing thought Tintoret tion Titian touch true truth Turner Venetian walls whole word
Popular passages
Page 174 - ... a confusion of delight, amidst which the breasts of the Greek horses are seen blazing in their breadth of golden strength, and the St. Mark's Lion, lifted on a blue field covered with stars, until at last, as if in ecstasy, the crests of the arches break into a marble foam, and toss themselves far into the blue sky in flashes and wreaths of sculptured spray, as if the breakers on the Lido shore had been frost-bound before they fell, and the seanymphs had inlaid them with coral and amethyst.
Page 174 - ... pomegranates, and birds clinging and fluttering among the branches, all twined together into an endless network of buds and plumes ; and, in the midst of it, the solemn forms of angels, sceptred, and robed to the feet, and leaning to each other across the gates, their figures indistinct among the gleaming of the golden ground through the leaves beside them, interrupted and dim, like the morning light as it faded back among the branches of Eden, when first its gates were angel-guarded long ago.
Page 47 - The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves, And flamed upon the brazen greaves Of bold Sir Lancelot. A red-cross knight for ever kneel'd To a lady in his shield, That sparkled on the yellow field, Beside remote Shalott.
Page 96 - A city of marble, did I say? nay, rather a golden city, paved with emerald. For truly, every pinnacle and turret glanced or glowed, overlaid with gold, or bossed with jasper. Beneath, the unsullied sea drew in deep breathing, to and fro, its eddies of green wave. Deep-hearted, majestic, terrible as the sea, - the men of Venice moved in sway of power and war; pure as her pillars of alabaster, stood her mothers and maidens; from foot to brow, all noble, walked her knights; the low bronzed gleaming...
Page 174 - ... capitals rich with interwoven tracery, rooted knots of herbage, and drifting leaves of acanthus and vine, and mystical signs, all beginning and ending in the Cross; and above them, in the broad archivolts, a continuous chain of language and of life...
Page 173 - And well may they fall back, for beyond those troops of ordered arches there rises a vision out of the earth, and all the great square seems to have opened from it in a kind of awe...
Page 175 - Under foot and over head, a continual succession of crowded imagery, one picture passing into another, as in a dream ; forms beautiful and terrible mixed together ; dragons and serpents, 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 passions and the pleasures of human life symbolized together, and the mystery of its redemption ; for the mazes of interwoven lines and changeful pictures lead always at last...
Page 21 - GREAT nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts — the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others ; but of the three, the only quite trustworthy one is the last.
Page 126 - Vulgarity, dulness, or impiety, will indeed always express themselves through art in brown and grey, as in Rembrandt, Caravaggio, and Salvator; but we are not wholly vulgar, dull, or impious ; nor, as moderns, are we necessarily obliged to continue so in anywise. Our greatest men, whether sad or gay, still delight, like the great men of all ages, in brilliant hues.
Page 120 - I think, the noblest sea that Turner has ever painted, and, if so, the noblest certainly ever painted by man, is that of the Slave Ship, the chief Academy picture of the Exhibition of 1840.