John Ruskin
Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture
Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664566805
Table of Contents
THE RELATION BETWEEN MICHAEL ANGELO AND TINTORET. [41]
LIST OF PLATES
Facing Page
I. Porch of San Zenone, Verona 14 II. The Arethusa of Syracuse 15 III. The Warning to the Kings, San Zenone, Verona 15 IV. The Nativity of Athena 46 V. Tomb of the Doges Jacopo and Lorenzo Tiepolo 49 VI. Archaic Athena of Athens and Corinth 50 VII. Archaic, Central and Declining Art of Greece 72 VIII. The Apollo of Syracuse, and the Self-made Man 84 IX. Apollo Chrysocomes of Clazomenæ 85 X. Marble Masonry in the Duomo of Verona 100 XI. The First Elements of Sculpture. Incised outline and opened space 101 XII. Branch of Phillyrea 109 XIII. Greek Flat relief, and sculpture by edged incision 111 XIV. Apollo and the Python. Heracles and the Nemean Lion 119 XV. Hera of Argos. Zeus of Syracuse 120 XVI. Demeter of Messene. Hera of Cnossus 121 XVII. Athena of Thurium. Siren Ligeia of Terina 121 XVIII. Artemis of Syracuse. Hera of Lacinian Cape 122 XIX. Zeus of Messene. Ajax of Opus 124 XX. Greek and Barbarian Sculpture 127 XXI. The Beginnings of Chivalry 129
PREFACE.
1. I must pray the readers of the following Lectures to remember that the duty at present laid on me at Oxford is of an exceptionally complex character. Directly, it is to awaken the interest of my pupils in a study which they have hitherto found unattractive, and imagined to be useless; but more imperatively, it is to define the principles by which the study itself should be guided; and to vindicate their security against the doubts with which frequent discussion has lately incumbered a subject which all think themselves competent to discuss. The possibility of such vindication is, of course, implied in the original consent of the Universities to the establishment of Art Professorships. Nothing can be made an element of education of which it is impossible to determine whether it is ill done or well; and the clear assertion that there is a canon law in formative Art is, at this time, a more important function of each University than the instruction of its younger members in any branch of practical skill. It matters comparatively little whether few or many of our students learn to draw; but it matters much that all who learn should be taught with accuracy. And the number who may be justifiably advised to give any part of the time they spend at college to the study of painting or sculpture ought to depend, and finally must depend, on their being certified that painting and sculpture, no less than language, or than reasoning, have grammar and method—that they permit a recognizable distinction between scholarship and ignorance, and enforce a constant distinction between Right and Wrong.
2. This opening course of Lectures on Sculpture is therefore restricted to the statement, not only of first principles, but of those which were illustrated by the practice of one school, and by that practice in its simplest branch, the analysis of which could be certified by easily accessible examples, and aided by the indisputable evidence of photography.[1]
The exclusion of the terminal Lecture[2] of the course from the series now published, is in order to mark more definitely this limitation of my subject; but in other respects the Lectures have been amplified in arranging them for the press, and the portions of them trusted at the time to extempore delivery (not through indolence, but because explanations of detail are always most intelligible when most familiar) have been in substance to the best of my power set down, and in what I said too imperfectly, completed.
3. In one essential particular I have felt it necessary to write what I would not have spoken. I had intended to make no reference, in my University Lectures, to existing schools of Art, except in cases where it might be necessary to point out some undervalued excellence. The objects specified in the eleventh paragraph of my inaugural Lecture[3] might, I hoped, have been accomplished without reference to any works deserving of blame; but the Exhibition of the Royal Academy in the present year showed me a necessity of departing from my original intention. The task of impartial criticism[4] is now, unhappily, no longer to rescue modest skill from neglect; but to withstand the errors of insolent genius, and abate the influence of plausible mediocrity.
The Exhibition of 1871 was very notable in this important particular, that it embraced some representation of the modern schools of nearly every country in Europe: and I am well assured that, looking back upon it after the excitement of that singular interest has passed away, every thoughtful judge of Art will confirm my assertion,