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Stones of Venice [introductions]

J >> John Ruskin >> Stones of Venice [introductions]




SECTION CXIX. I leave these facts to the consideration of the European
patrons of art. Twenty years hence they will be acknowledged and
regretted; at present, I am well aware, that it is of little use to
bring them forward, except only to explain the present impossibility of
stating what pictures _are_, and what _were_, in the interior
of the Ducal Palace. I can only say, that in the winter of 1851, the
"Paradise" of Tintoret was still comparatively uninjured, and that the
Camera di Collegio, and its antechamber, and the Sala de' Pregadi were
full of pictures by Veronese and Tintoret, that made their walls as
precious as so many kingdoms; so precious indeed, and so full of
majesty, that sometimes when walking at evening on the Lido, whence the
great chain of the Alps, crested with silver clouds, might be seen
rising above the front of the Ducal Palace, I used to feel as much awe
in gazing on the building as on the hills, and could believe that God
had done a greater work in breathing into the narrowness of dust the
mighty spirits by whom its haughty walls had been raised, and its
burning legends written, than in lifting the rocks of granite higher
than the clouds of heaven, and veiling them with their various mantle of
purple flower and shadowy pine.




NOTE.


I have printed the chapter on the Ducal Palace, quite one of the most
important pieces of work done in my life, without alteration of its
references to the plates of the first edition, because I hope both to
republish some of those plates, and together with them, a few permanent
photographs (both from the sculpture of the Palace itself, and from my
own drawings of its detail), which may be purchased by the possessors of
this smaller edition to bind with the book or not, as they please. This
separate publication I can now soon set in hand; and I believe it will
cause much less confusion to leave for the present the references to the
old plates untouched. The wood-blocks used for the first three figures
in this chapter, are the original ones: that of the Ducal Palace façade
was drawn on the wood by my own hand, and cost me more trouble than it
is worth, being merely given for division and proportion. The greater
part of the first volume, omitted in this edition after "the Quarry,"
will be republished in the series of my reprinted works, with its
original wood-blocks.

But my mind is mainly set now on getting some worthy illustration of the
St. Mark's mosaics, and of such remains of the old capitals (now for
ever removed, in process of the Palace restoration, from their life in
sea wind and sunlight, and their ancient duty, to a museum-grave) as I
have useful record of, drawn in their native light. The series, both of
these and of the earlier mosaics, of which the sequence is sketched in
the preceding volume, and farther explained in the third number of "St.
Mark's Rest," become to me every hour of my life more precious both for
their art and their meaning; and if any of my readers care to help me,
in my old age, to fulfil my life's work rightly, let them send what
pence they can spare for these objects to my publisher, Mr. Allen,
Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent.

Since writing the first part of this note, I have received a letter from
Mr. Burne Jones, assuring me of his earnest sympathy in its object, and
giving me hope even of his superintendence of the drawings, which I have
already desired to be undertaken. But I am no longer able to continue
work of this kind at my own cost; and the fulfilment of my purpose must
entirely depend on the money-help given me by my readers.

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