



Produced by Brownfox, Juliet Sutherland and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net









                      _Library Edition_

                     THE COMPLETE WORKS

                             OF

                         JOHN RUSKIN


                      THE EAGLE'S NEST
                        LOVE'S MEINIE
                     ARIADNE FLORENTINA
                         VAL D'ARNO
                         PROSERPINA


                NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
                NEW YORK             CHICAGO




                     ARIADNE FLORENTINA.


                        SIX LECTURES

                             ON

                  WOOD AND METAL ENGRAVING

                       WITH APPENDIX.


           GIVEN BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,

                  IN MICHAELMAS TERM, 1872.




                         CONTENTS.



                         LECTURE I.
                                                                       PAGE
DEFINITION OF THE ART OF ENGRAVING                                       1


                         LECTURE II.

THE RELATION OF ENGRAVING TO OTHER ARTS IN FLORENCE                     22


                         LECTURE III.

THE TECHNICS OF WOOD ENGRAVING                                          42


                         LECTURE IV.

THE TECHNICS OF METAL ENGRAVING                                         61


                         LECTURE V.

DESIGN IN THE GERMAN SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING (HOLBEIN AND DUeRER)           81


                         LECTURE VI.

DESIGN IN THE FLORENTINE SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING (SANDRO BOTTICELLI)      108


                         APPENDIX.

ARTICLE
 I. NOTES ON THE PRESENT STATE OF ENGRAVING IN ENGLAND                 143

II. DETACHED NOTES                                                     157




LIST OF PLATES


                                                                Facing Page
Diagram                                                                  27

The Last Furrow (Fig. 2). Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut               47

The Two Preachers (Fig. 3). Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut             48

   I. Things Celestial and Terrestrial, as apparent to the English mind  56

  II. Star of Florence                                                   62

 III. "At evening from the top of Fesole"                                72

  IV. "By the Springs of Parnassus"                                      77

   V. "Heat considered as a Mode of Motion." Florentine Natural
          Philosophy                                                     92

  VI. Fairness of the Sea and Air. In Venice and Athens                  95

      The Child's Bedtime (Fig. 5). Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut    103

      "He that hath ears to hear let him hear" (Fig. 6). Facsimile from
          Holbein's woodcut                                             105

 VII. For a time, and times                                             130

VIII. The Nymph beloved of Apollo (Michael Angelo)                      131

  IX. In the Woods of Ida                                               132

   X. Grass of the Desert                                               135

  XI. "Obediente Domino voci hominis"                                   145

 XII. The Coronation in the Garden                                      158




                     ARIADNE FLORENTINA.




                         LECTURE I.

             DEFINITION OF THE ART OF ENGRAVING.


1. The entrance on my duty for to-day begins the fourth year of my
official work in Oxford; and I doubt not that some of my audience are
asking themselves, very doubtfully--at all events, I ask myself, very
anxiously--what has been done.

For practical result, I have not much to show. I announced, a fortnight
since, that I would meet, the day before yesterday, any gentleman who
wished to attend this course for purposes of study. My class, so minded,
numbers four, of whom three wish to be artists, and ought not therefore,
by rights, to be at Oxford at all; and the fourth is the last remaining
unit of the class I had last year.

2. Yet I neither in this reproach myself, nor, if I could, would I
reproach the students who are not here. I do not reproach myself; for it
was impossible for me to attend properly to the schools and to write the
grammar for them at the same time; and I do not blame the absent
students for not attending a school from which I have generally been
absent myself. In all this, there is much to be mended, but, in true
light, nothing to be regretted.

I say, I had to write my school grammar. These three volumes of lectures
under my hand,[A] contain, carefully set down, the things I want you
first to know. None of my writings are done fluently; the second volume
of "Modern Painters" was all of it written twice--most of it, four
times,--over; and these lectures have been written, I don't know how
many times. You may think that this was done merely in an author's
vanity, not in a tutor's care. To the vanity I plead guilty,--no man is
more intensely vain than I am; but my vanity is set on having it _known_
of me that I am a good master, not in having it _said_ of me that I am a
smooth author. My vanity is never more wounded than in being called a
fine writer, meaning--that nobody need mind what I say.

3. Well, then, besides this vanity, I have some solicitude for your
progress. You may give me credit for it or not, as you choose, but it is
sincere. And that your advance may be safe, I have taken the best pains
I could in laying down laws for it. In these three years I have got my
grammar written, and, with the help of many friends, all working
instruments in good order; and now we will try what we can do. Not that,
even now, you are to depend on my presence with you in personal
teaching. I shall henceforward think of the lectures less, of the
schools more; but my best work for the schools will often be by drawing
in Florence or in Lancashire--not here.

4. I have already told you several times that the course through which I
mean every student in these schools should pass, is one which shall
enable them to understand the elementary principles of the finest art.
It will necessarily be severe, and seem to lead to no immediate result.
Some of you will, on the contrary, wish to be taught what is immediately
easy, and gives prospect of a manifest success.

But suppose they should come to the Professor of Logic and Rhetoric, and
tell him they want to be taught to preach like Mr. Spurgeon, or the
Bishop of ----.

He would say to them,--I cannot, and if I could I would not, tell you
how to preach like Mr. Spurgeon, or the Bishop of ----. Your own
character will form your style; your own zeal will direct it; your own
obstinacy or ignorance may limit or exaggerate it; but my business is to
prevent, as far as I can, your having _any_ particular style; and to
teach you the laws of all language, and the essential power of your own.

In like manner, this course, which I propose to you in art, will be
calculated only to give you judgment and method in future study, to
establish to your conviction the laws of general art, and to enable you
to draw, if not with genius, at least with sense and propriety.

The course, so far as it consists in practice, will be defined in my
Instructions for the schools. And the theory connected with that
practice is set down in the three lectures at the end of the first
course I delivered--those on Line, Light, and Color.

You will have, therefore, to get this book,[B] and it is the only one
which you will need to have of your own,--the others are placed, for
reference, where they will be accessible to you.

5. In the 139th paragraph it states the order of your practical study in
these terms:--

"I wish you to begin by getting command of line;--that is to say, by
learning to draw a steady line, limiting with absolute correctness the
form or space you intend it to limit; to proceed by getting command over
flat tints, so that you may be able to fill the spaces you have inclosed
evenly, either with shade or color, according to the school you adopt;
and, finally, to obtain the power of adding such fineness of drawing,
within the masses, as shall express their undulation, and their
characters of form and texture."

And now, since in your course of practice you are first required to
attain the power of drawing lines accurately and delicately, so in the
course of theory, or grammar, I wish you first to learn the principles
of linear design, exemplified by the schools which (Sec. 137) you will find
characterized as the Schools of Line.

6. If I had command of as much time as I should like to spend with you
on this subject, I would begin with the early forms of art which used
the simplest linear elements of design. But, for general service and
interest, it will be better that I should sketch what has been
accomplished by the greatest masters in that manner; the rather that
their work is more or less accessible to all, and has developed into the
vast industries of modern engraving, one of the most powerful existing
influences of education and sources of pleasure among civilized people.

And this investigation, so far from interrupting, will facilitate our
examination of the history of the nobler arts. You will see in the
preface to my lectures on Greek sculpture that I intend them to be
followed by a course on architecture, and that by one on Florentine
sculpture. But the art of engraving is so manifestly, at Florence,
though not less essentially elsewhere, a basis of style both in
architecture and sculpture, that it is absolutely necessary I should
explain to you in what the skill of the engraver consists, before I can
define with accuracy that of more admired artists. For engraving, though
not altogether in the method of which you see examples in the
print-shops of the High Street, is, indeed, a prior art to that either
of building or sculpture, and is an inseparable part of both, when they
are rightly practiced.

7. And while we thus examine the scope of this first of the arts, it
will be necessary that we learn also the scope of mind of the early
practicers of it, and accordingly acquaint ourselves with the main
events in the biography of the schools of Florence. To understand the
temper and meaning of one great master is to lay the best, if not the
only, foundation for the understanding of all; and I shall therefore
make it the leading aim of this course of lectures to remind you of what
is known, and direct you to what is knowable, of the life and character
of the greatest Florentine master of engraving, Sandro Botticelli; and,
incidentally, to give you some idea of the power of the greatest master
of the German, or any northern, school, Hans Holbein.

8. You must feel, however, that I am using the word "engraving" in a
somewhat different, and, you may imagine, a wider, sense, than that
which you are accustomed to attach to it. So far from being a wider
sense, it is in reality a more accurate and restricted one, while yet it
embraces every conceivable right application of the art. And I wish, in
this first lecture, to make entirely clear to you the proper meaning of
the word, and proper range of the art of, engraving; in my next
following lecture, to show you its place in Italian schools, and then,
in due order, the place it ought to take in our own, and in all schools.

9. First then, to-day, of the Differentia, or essential quality of
Engraving, as distinguished from other arts.

What answer would you make to me, if I asked casually what engraving
was? Perhaps the readiest which would occur to you would be, "The
translation of pictures into black and white by means admitting
reduplication of impressions." But if that be done by lithography, we do
not call it engraving,--whereas we speak contentedly and continually of
seal engraving, in which there is no question of black and white. And,
as scholars, you know that this customary mode of speaking is quite
accurate; and that engraving means, primarily, making a permanent cut or
furrow in something. The central syllable of the word has become a
sorrowful one, meaning the most permanent of furrows.

10. But are you prepared absolutely to accept this limitation with
respect to engraving as a pictorial art? Will you call nothing an
engraving, except a group of furrows or cavities cut in a hard
substance? What shall we say of mezzotint engraving, for instance, in
which, though indeed furrows and cavities are produced mechanically as a
ground, the artist's work is in effacing them? And when we consider the
power of engraving in representing pictures and multiplying them, are we
to recognize and admire no effects of light and shade except those which
are visibly produced by dots or furrows? I mean, will the virtue of an
engraving be in exhibiting these imperfect means of its effect, or in
concealing them?

11. Here, for instance, is the head of a soldier by Duerer,--a mere
gridiron of black lines. Would this be better or worse engraving if it
were more like a photograph or lithograph, and no lines seen?--suppose,
more like the head of Mr. Santley, now in all the music-shops, and
really quite deceptive in light and shade, when seen from over the way?
Do you think Duerer's work would be better if it were more like that? And
would you have me, therefore, leaving the question of technical method
of production altogether to the craftsman, consider pictorial engraving
simply as the production of a light-and-shade drawing, by some method
permitting its multiplication for the public?

12. This, you observe, is a very practical question indeed. For
instance, the illustrations of my own lectures on sculpture are
equivalent to permanent photographs. There can be little doubt that
means will be discovered of thus producing perfect facsimiles of
artists' drawings; so that, if no more than facsimile be required, the
old art of cutting furrows in metal may be considered as, at this day,
virtually ended. And, indeed, it is said that line engravers cannot any
more get apprentices, and that a pure steel or copper plate is not
likely to be again produced, when once the old living masters of the
bright field shall have been all laid in their earth-furrows.

13. Suppose, then, that this come to pass; and more than this, suppose
that wood engraving also be superseded, and that instead of imperfect
transcripts of drawings, on wood-blocks or metal-plates, photography
enabled us to give, quite cheaply, and without limit to number,
facsimiles of the finished light-and-shade drawings of artists
themselves. Another group of questions instantly offers itself, on these
new conditions; namely, What are the best means for a light-and-shade
drawing--the pen, or the pencil, the charcoal, or the flat wash? That is
to say, the pen, producing shade by black lines, as old engraving did;
the pencil, producing shade by gray lines, variable in force; the
charcoal, producing a smoky shadow with no lines in it, or the washed
tint, producing a transparent shadow with no lines in it. Which of
these methods is the best?--or have they, each and all, virtues to be
separately studied, and distinctively applied?

14. See how curiously the questions multiply on us. 1st, Is engraving to
be only considered as cut work? 2d, For present designs multipliable
without cutting, by the sunshine, what methods or instruments of drawing
will be best? And now, 3dly, before we can discuss these questions at
all, is there not another lying at the root of both,--namely, what a
light-and-shade drawing itself properly _is_, and how it differs, or
should differ, from a painting, whether by mere deficiency, or by some
entirely distinct merit?

15. For instance, you know how confidently it is said, in common talk
about Turner, that his works are intelligible and beautiful when
engraved, though incomprehensible as paintings. Admitting this to be so,
do you suppose it is because the translation into light and shade is
deficient in some qualities which the painting had, or that it possesses
some quality which the painting had not? Does it please more because it
is deficient in the color which confused a feeble spectator, and
offended a dogmatic one,--or because it possesses a decision in its
steady linear labor which interprets, or corrects, the swift penciling
of the artist?

16. Do you notice the two words I have just used, _Decision_, and
_Linear_?--Decision, again introducing the idea of cuts or divisions, as
opposed to gradations; Linear, as opposed to massive or broad?

Yet we use all these words at different times in praise, while they
evidently mark inconsistent qualities. Softness and decision, breadth
and delineation, cannot co-exist in equal degrees. There must surely
therefore be a virtue in the engraving inconsistent with that of the
painting, and vice versa.

Now, be clear about these three questions which we have to-day to
answer.

     A. Is all engraving to be cut work?

     B. If it need not be cut work, but only the reproduction of a
     drawing, what methods of executing a light-and-shade drawing
     will be best?

     C. Is the shaded drawing itself to be considered only as a
     deficient or imperfect painting, or as a different thing from a
     painting, having a virtue of its own, belonging to black and
     white, as opposed to color?

17. I will give you the answers at once, briefly, and amplify them
afterwards.

     A. All engraving must be cut work;--_that_ is its differentia.
     Unless your effect be produced by cutting into some solid
     substance, it is not engraving at all.

     B. The proper methods for light-and-shade drawing vary
     according to subject, and the degree of completeness
     desired,--some of them having much in common with engraving,
     and others with painting.

     C. The qualities of a light-and-shade drawing ought to be
     entirely different from those of a painting. It is not a
     deficient or partial representation of a colored scene or
     picture, but an entirely different reading of either. So that
     much of what is intelligible in a painting ought to be
     unintelligible in a light-and-shade study, and _vice versa_.

You have thus three arts,--engraving, light-and-shade drawing, and
painting.

Now I am not going to lecture, in this course, on painting, nor on
light-and-shade drawing, but on engraving only. But I must tell you
something about light-and-shade drawing first; or, at least, remind you
of what I have before told.

18. You see that the three elementary lectures in my first volume are on
Line, Light, and Color,--that is to say, on the modes of art which
produce linear designs,--which produce effects of light,--and which
produce effects of color.

I must, for the sake of new students, briefly repeat the explanation of
these.

Here is an Arabian vase, in which the pleasure given to the eye is only
by lines;--no effect of light, or of color, is attempted. Here is a
moonlight by Turner, in which there are no lines at all, and no colors
at all. The pleasure given to the eye is only by modes of light and
shade, or effects of light. Finally, here is an early Florentine
painting, in which there are no lines of importance, and no effect of
light whatever; but all the pleasure given to the eye is in gayety and
variety of color.

19. I say, the pleasure given to the _eye_. The lines on this vase write
something; but the ornamentation produced by the beautiful writing is
independent of its meaning. So the moonlight is pleasant, first, as
light; and the figures, first, as color. It is not the shape of the
waves, but the light on them; not the expression of the figures, but
their color, by which the _ocular_ pleasure is to be given.

These three examples are violently marked ones; but, in preparing to
draw _any_ object, you will find that, practically, you have to ask
yourself, Shall I aim at the color of it, the light of it, or the lines
of it? You can't have all three; you can't even have any two out of the
three in equal strength. The best art, indeed, comes so near nature as
in a measure to