Ariadne Florentina

Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving

by John Ruskin

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Pages: 94

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About this book

Ariadne Florentina by John Ruskin carries the subtitle Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving. The lecturer asks whether all engraving is to be cut work and, if it need not be, what methods of executing a light-and-shade drawing will be best. The lecture text mentions common talk that the works of Turner are intelligible and beautiful when engraved, though incomprehensible as paintings.

The lecturer repeats a former statement that the first main opposition between the Northern and Southern schools is in the simplicity of the one, and the scholarship of the other. The lecturer says that the last time he stood before the arabesques of Raphael in the Loggias of the Vatican, he wrote down in his pocket-book the description, or, more modestly speaking, the inventory. The text says Botticelli wants, with as little engraving, as much Sibyl as possible, and that his head is full of Sibyls.

About the author

John Ruskin

John Ruskin (1819-1900) was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era and an influential social thinker whose ideas on art, labor, and society shaped movements from the Pre-Raphaelites to the welfare state.