Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture: Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870Ruskin, John
Philosophy
Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture: Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870
Ruskin, John
Sculpture
5. The present course of Lectures will be followed, if I am able to
fulfill the design of them, by one of a like elementary character on
Architecture; and that by a third series on Christian Sculpture: but, in
the meantime, my effort is to direct the attention of the resident
students to Natural History, and to the higher branches of ideal
Landscape: and it will be, I trust, accepted as sufficient reason for
the delay which has occurred in preparing the following sheets for the
press, that I have not only been interrupted by a dangerous illness, but
engaged, in what remained to me of the summer, in an endeavor to deduce,
from the overwhelming complexity of modern classification in the Natural
Sciences, some forms capable of easier reference by Art students, to
whom the anatomy of brutal and floral nature is often no less important
than that of the human body.
The preparation of examples for manual practice, and the arrangement of
standards for reference, both in Painting and Sculpture, had to be
carried on, meanwhile, as I was able. For what has already been done,
the reader is referred to the "Catalogue of the Educational Series,"
published at the end of the Spring Term: of what remains to be done I
will make no anticipatory statement, being content to have ascribed to
me rather the fault of narrowness in design, than of extravagance in
expectation.
DENMARK HILL,
_25th November, 1871._
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Photography cannot exhibit the character of large and finished
sculpture; but its audacity of shadow is in perfect harmony with the
more roughly picturesque treatment necessary in coins. For the rendering
of all such frank relief, and for the better explanation of forms
disturbed by the luster of metal or polished stone, the method employed
in the plates of this volume will be found, I believe, satisfactory.
Casts are first taken from the coins, in white plaster; these are
photographed, and the photograph printed by the autotype process. Plate
XII. is exceptional, being a pure mezzotint engraving of the old school,
excellently carried through by my assistant, Mr. Allen, who was taught,
as a personal favor to myself, by my friend, and Turner's fellow-worker,
Thomas Lupton. Plate IV. was intended to be a photograph from the superb
vase in the British Museum, No. 564 in Mr. Newton's Catalogue; but its
variety of color defied photography, and after the sheets had gone to
press I was compelled to reduce Le Normand's plate of it, which is
unsatisfactory, but answers my immediate purpose.
The enlarged photographs for use in the Lecture Room were made for me
with most successful skill by Sergeant Spackman, of South Kensington;
and the help throughout rendered to me by Mr. Burgess is acknowledged in
the course of the Lectures; though with thanks which must remain
inadequate lest they should become tedious; for Mr. Burgess drew the
subjects of Plates III., X., and XIII.; and drew and engraved every
wood-cut in the book.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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