Val d'Arno: Ten Lectures on the Tuscan Art Directly Antecedent to the Florentine Year of Victories; Given Before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1873Ruskin, John
History
Val d'Arno: Ten Lectures on the Tuscan Art Directly Antecedent to the Florentine Year of Victories; Given Before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1873
Ruskin, John
Art -- Italy -- Tuscany
179. Soft, but with no unmanly softness; luxuriant, but with no
unmannered luxury. To him you owe as to their first sire in art, the
grace of Ghiberti, the tenderness of Raphael, the awe of Michael Angelo.
Second-rate qualities in all the three, but precious in their kind, and
learned, as you shall see, essentially from this man. Second-rate he
also, but with most notable gifts of this inferior kind. He is the
Canova of the thirteenth century; but the Canova of the thirteenth,
remember, was necessarily a very different person from the Canova of the
eighteenth.
The Cauova of the eighteenth century mimicked Greek grace for the
delight of modern revolutionary sensualists. The Canova of the
thirteenth century brought living Gothic truth into the living faith of
his own time.
Greek truth, and Gothic 'liberty,'--in that noble sense of the word,
derived from the Latin 'liber,' of which I have already spoken, and
which in my next lecture I will endeavour completely to develope.
Meanwhile let me show you, as far as I can, the architecture itself
about which these subtle questions arise.
180. Here are five frames, containing the best representations I can get
for you of the façade of the cathedral of Orvieto. I must remind you,
before I let you look at them, of the reason why that cathedral was
built; for I have at last got to the end of the parenthesis which began
in my second lecture, on the occasion of our hearing that John of Pisa
was sent for to Perugia, to carve the tomb of Pope Urban IV.; and we
must now know who this Pope was.
181. He was a Frenchman, born at that Troyes, in Champagne, which I gave
you as the centre of French architectural skill, and Royalist character.
He was born in the lowest class of the people, rose like Wolsey; became
Bishop of Verdun; then, Patriarch of Jerusalem; returned in the year
1261, from his Patriarchate, to solicit the aid of the then Pope,
Alexander IV., against the Saracen. I do not know on what day he arrived
in Rome; but on the 25th of May, Alexander died, and the Cardinals,
after three months' disputing, elected the suppliant Patriarch to be
Pope himself.
182. A man with all the fire of France in him, all the faith, and all
the insolence; incapable of doubting a single article of his creed, or
relaxing one tittle of his authority; destitute alike of reason and of
pity; and absolutely merciless either to an infidel, or an enemy. The
young Prince Manfred, bastard son of Frederick II., now representing
the main power of the German empire, was both; and against him the Pope
brought into Italy a religious French knight, of character absolutely
like his own, Charles of Anjou.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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