Ruskin's Venice: The Stones Revisited

Of the many foreign travellers who have written about Venice there is none to surpass John Ruskin, the great nineteenth-century writer, artist and critic, whose massive three-volume work The Stones of Venice (1851-3) remains one of the most influential books on art and architecture ever written. Known and read all over the world in Ruskin's lifetime, the Stones surveyed the buildings of Venice and developed an aesthetic and intellectual argument which is still at the heart of the debate on the meaning of architecture and craftsmanship.

To mark the centenary of Ruskin's death, Sarah Quill has compiled an illustrated guide to The Stones of Venice, linking Ruskin's descriptions of individual buildings with a contemporary photographic record of the architecture and sculpture as it is seen today. It excludes interiors and paintings, concentrating on the exterior architecture and sculpture of Venice, all of which may be seen from the street or from the water without entering a building. Much of Ruskin's splendid prose is reproduced, together with many of his drawings and watercolors and a number of nineteenth-century engravings of the period. More than 200 photographs taken by Sarah Quill during the 1990s identify the details described by Ruskin and show the extent to which the city's architecture has survived, or changed, since publication of The Stones of Venice over 150 years ago. The opening chapter by Alan Windsor provides informative introductions to Ruskin's involvement with Venice, and to the periods and styles of Venetian architecture.

Ruskin, a superb draughtsman, wrote that he wished life were long enough to illustrate his books more fully. The photographs included in this edition redress that balance, and the modern reader will find that Ruskin is still an eloquent and persuasive guide to the architecture of this unique and fragile city.