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Transcriber's note:

      Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).

      Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=).

      The text includes a modest amount of Greek, which has
      been transliterated here and enclosed by plus signs
      (e.g., +sophia+). Ruskin abandoned the Greek characters
      in later lectures, transliterating himself. These
      appear as printed (not enclosed by plus signs).

      Footnotes have been located to the end of each numbered
      paragraph.

      Consult the transcriber's note at the end of this text
      for details.





THE EAGLE'S NEST.

Ten Lectures on the Relation of Natural Science to Art,
Given Before the University of Oxford, in Lent Term, 1872

by

JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D.,

Honorary Student of Christ Church, and Honorary Fellow
of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

Twelfth Thousand







London
George Allen, 156, Charing Cross Road
1900

[All rights reserved]

Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
At the Ballantyne Press




PREFACE.


The following Lectures have been written, not with less care, but with
less pains, than any in former courses, because no labour could have
rendered them exhaustive statements of their subjects, and I wished,
therefore, to take from them every appearance of pretending to be so:
but the assertions I have made are entirely deliberate, though their
terms are unstudied; and the one which to the general reader will appear
most startling, that the study of anatomy is destructive to art, is
instantly necessary in explanation of the system adopted for the
direction of my Oxford schools.

At the period when engraving might have become to art what printing
became to literature, the four greatest point-draughtsmen hitherto
known, Mantegna, Sandro Botticelli, Duerer, and Holbein, occupied
themselves in the new industry. All these four men were as high in
intellect and moral sentiment as in art-power; and if they had engraved
as Giotto painted, with popular and unscientific simplicity, would have
left an inexhaustible series of prints, delightful to the most innocent
minds, and strengthening to the most noble.

But two of them, Mantegna and Duerer, were so polluted and paralyzed by
the study of anatomy that the former's best works (the magnificent
mythology of the Vices in the Louvre, for instance) are entirely
revolting to all women and children; while Duerer never could draw one
beautiful female form or face; and, of his important plates, only four,
the Melancholia, St. Jerome in his study, St. Hubert, and The Knight and
Death, are of any use for popular instruction, because in these only,
the figures being fully draped or armed, he was enabled to think and
feel rightly, being delivered from the ghastly toil of bone-delineation.

Botticelli and Holbein studied the face first, and the limbs
secondarily; and the works they have left are therefore (without
exception) precious; yet saddened and corrupted by the influence which
the contemporary masters of body-drawing exercised on them; and at last
eclipsed by their false fame. I purpose, therefore, in my next course of
lectures, to explain the relation of these two draughtsmen to other
masters of design, and of engraving.

BRANTWOOD, _Sept. 2nd, 1872._




CONTENTS.

                       LECTURE I.

                 _February 8, 1872._

                                                       PAGE
  THE FUNCTION IN ART OF THE FACULTY CALLED BY
  THE GREEKS +sophia+                                       1


                       LECTURE II.

                  _February 10, 1872._

  THE FUNCTION IN SCIENCE OF THE FACULTY CALLED BY
  THE GREEKS +sophia+                                      25


                       LECTURE III.

                  _February 15, 1872._

  THE RELATION OF WISE ART TO WISE SCIENCE                 46


                       LECTURE IV.

                  _February 17, 1872._

  THE FUNCTION IN ART AND SCIENCE OF THE VIRTUE
  CALLED BY THE GREEKS +sophrosyne+                        74


                       LECTURE V.

                  _February 22, 1872._

  THE FUNCTION IN ART AND SCIENCE OF THE VIRTUE
  CALLED BY THE GREEKS +autarkeia+                         89


                       LECTURE VI.

                  _February 24, 1872._

  THE RELATION TO ART OF THE SCIENCE OF LIGHT             114


                       LECTURE VII.

                  _February 29, 1872._

  THE RELATION TO ART OF THE SCIENCES OF INORGANIC
  FORM                                                    138


                       LECTURE VIII.

                      _March 2, 1872._

  THE RELATION TO ART OF THE SCIENCES OF ORGANIC
  FORM                                                    161


                        LECTURE IX.

                     _March 7, 1872._

  INTRODUCTION TO ELEMENTARY EXERCISES IN PHYSIOLOGIC
  ART. THE STORY OF THE HALCYON                           188


                        LECTURE X.

                     _March 9, 1872._

  INTRODUCTION TO ELEMENTARY EXERCISES IN HISTORIC
  ART. THE HERALDIC ORDINARIES                            225




                           THE EAGLE'S NEST.




                               LECTURE I.

                     OF WISDOM AND FOLLY IN ART.[A]

                         _8th February, 1872._


1. The Lectures I have given hitherto, though, in the matter of them
conscientiously addressed to my undergraduate pupils, yet were greatly
modified in method by my feeling that this undergraduate class, to which
