Author: RUSKIN, JOHN.
Title: The Stones Of Venice. By John Ruskin, LL.D. Fourth Edition. Volume The First: The Foundations; Volume The Second: The Sea-Stories; Volume The Third: The Fall.
Description: Orpington, Kent : George Allen, Sunnyside, 1886. 0. A very good 3 volume set in the original brown cloth binding. 4to. 11.75" x 8.50" x 1.50". All 3 volumes in very good condition, with no loose, missing or damaged pages. Clean brown cloth, just light edge wear and bumped corners. Each spine with bright gilt titles, volume number and publication date. Light rubbing to top & tail. Clean endpapers. Each volume with a printed half title and title page. Clean English text throughout, just a few light brown spots to the margins of a few leaves. All engravings with original tissue guards. Vol. I. pp.15/[2pp.]/pp.403 with 21 full-page engavings (some coloured); Vol. II. pp.14/[2pp.]/397 with 21 full-page engravings (some coloured); Vol. III. [6pp.]/pp.352/[2pp.]/pp.135 with 12 full-page engavings (some coloured). VG. Please note this is a heavy book so there will be an extra charge for posting overseas. *** "The Stones of Venice is a three-volume treatise on Venetian art and architecture by English art historian John Ruskin, first published from 1851 to 1853. The first volume, “The Foundations,” is an architectural treatise that specifies the rules of architecture.The second and third volumes deal with specific structures in the city of Venice. The second volume is subtitled “The Sea Stories,” a reference to the lowest story of a Venetian building, called the sea story. This volume looks specifically at Byzantine and Gothic architecture within the city, while clearly privileging these styles above the Venetian Renaissance that he discusses in the third volume, “The Fall.” Throughout each volume, Ruskin discusses both specific buildings, such as St. Mark’s and the Ducal Palace, and the stylistic evolution of numerous architectural features, including column bases, capitals, cornices, windows, and, most notably, arches. His studies of arches provide not only an example of the types of arches found around Venice, but also a “scheme for the development of the mature Gothic style,” as his chronology of stylistic progression focused mainly on this period. "The Stones of Venice" examines Venetian architecture in detail, describing for example over eighty churches. He discusses architecture of Venice's Byzantine, Gothic and Renaissance periods, and provides a general history of the city. As well as an being an art historian, Ruskin was a social reformer. In the chapter "The Nature of Gothic" (from volume 2), Ruskin gives his views on how society should be organised: "We want one man to be always thinking, and another to be always working, and we call one a gentleman, and the other an operative; whereas the workman ought often to be thinking, and the thinker often to be working, and both should be gentlemen, in the best sense. As it is, we make both ungentle, the one envying, the other despising, his brother; and the mass of society is made up of morbid thinkers and miserable workers. Now it is only by labour that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labour can be made happy, and the two cannot be separated with impunity." Ruskin set out to prove how Venetian architecture exemplified the principles he discussed in his earlier work, The Seven Lamps of Architecture. Ruskin had visited Venice before, but he made two visits to Venice with his wife Effie specially to research the book. The first visit was in the winter of 1849-50. The first volume of The Stones of Venice appeared in 1851 and Ruskin spent another winter in Venice researching the next two volumes. His research methods included sketching and photography (by 1849 he had acquired his own camera so that he could take daguerrotypes). It aroused considerable interest in Victorian Britain and beyond. The chapter "The Nature of Gothic" was admired by William Morris, who published it separately in an edition which is in itself an example of Gothic revival. The book inspired Marcel Proust (the narrator of the Recherche visits Venice with his mother in a state of enthusiasm for Ruskin) and in 2010 Roger Scruton wrote that the book was, "the greatest description in English of a place made sacred by buildings". - See Wikipedia .

Keywords: 53229 George Allen Ruskin the Stones of Venice by John Ruskin, LL. D. Fourth Edition. Volume the First: The Foundations; Volume the Second: The Sea-Stories; Volume the Third the Fall. Architecture: : 19th Century


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