On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2): A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and LiteratureRuskin, John
General
On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2): A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature
Ruskin, John
Art; Essays; Literature
peristyle, and then with the aspiration of the spire; had he set the
colossal horror of the Sphinx beside the Phidian Minerva, and this
beside the Pieta of M. Angelo; had he led us from beneath the iridescent
capitals of Denderah, by the contested line of Apelles, to the hues and
the heaven of Perugino or Bellini, we might have been tempted to
assoilzie from all staying of question or stroke of partisan the
invulnerable aspect of his ghostly theory; but, if, with even partial
regard to some of the circumstances which physically limited the
attainments of each race, we follow their individual career, we shall
find the points of superiority less salient and the connection between
heart and hand more embarrassed.
29. Yet let us not be misunderstood:--the great gulf between Christian
and Pagan art we cannot bridge--nor do we wish to weaken one single
sentence wherein its breadth or depth is asserted by our author. The
separation is not gradual, but instant and final--the difference not of
degree, but of condition; it is the difference between the dead vapors
rising from a stagnant pool, and the same vapors touched by a torch. But
we would brace the weakness which Lord Lindsay has admitted in his own
assertion of this great inflaming instant by confusing its fire with the
mere phosphorescence of the marsh, and explaining as a successive
development of the several human faculties, what was indeed the bearing
of them all at once, over a threshold strewed with the fragments of
their idols, into the temple of the One God.
We shall therefore, as fully as our space admits, examine the
application of our author's theory to Architecture, Sculpture, and
Painting, successively, setting before the reader some of the more
interesting passages which respect each art, while we at the same time
mark with what degree of caution their conclusions are, in our judgment,
to be received.
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