Identifier: ariadneflorentin1892rusk (find matches)
Title: Ariadne florentina; six lectures on wood and metal engraving, with appendix; given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas term, 1872.
Year: 1892 (1890s)
Authors: Ruskin, John, 1819-1900 Norton, Charles Eliot, 1827-1908, author of introduction, etc
Subjects: Engraving Wood-engraving
Publisher: New York : Charles E. Merrill & Co.
Contributing Library: Boston Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Public Library

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er planet, the ruling star ofFlorence. Anything more grotesque in con-ception, more unrestrained in fancy of ornament,you cannot find, even in the final days of theRenaissance. Yet Venus holds her divinitythrough all; she will become majestic to you asyou gaze ; and there is not a line of her chariotwheels, of her buskins, or of her throne, whichyou may not see was engraved by a gentleman. 159. Again, Plate V., opposite, is a facsimileof another engraving of the same series—theSun in Leo. It is even more extravagant inaccessories than the Venus. You see the Sunsepaulettes before you see the sun ; the spiralscrolls of his chariot, and the black twisted raysof it, might, so far as types of form only areconsidered, be a design for some modern court-dress star, to be made in diamonds. And yetall this wild ornamentation is, if you will ex-amine it, more purely Greek in spirit than theApollo Belvidere. You know I have told you, again and again,that the soul of Greece is her veracity; that
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^l^^^~J^^ i ^^^^ CJ o S^^s^^^ ■n h ^^^^ o 1 ^^^^^^^^^-^^ c^ o ^^^^^ ~^s^~ o o ID ^K ^ ^ xi ^ ^V^ •■ ^ o ^ §^S^ d 1 ■•N rd ^ % i (D ^ •i3 S a a <D oo ^ S GERMAN SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING. 165 what to Other nations were fables and symbol-isms, to her became living facts—living gods.The fall of Greece was instant when her godsagain became fables. The Apollo Belvidere isthe work of a sculptor to whom ApoUonism ismerely an elegant idea on which to exhibit hisown skill. He does not himself feel for aninstant that the handsome man in the unintel-ligible attitude,* with drapery hung over hisleft arm, as it would be hung to dry over aclothes-line, is the Power of the Sun. But theFlorentine believes in Apollo with his wholemind, and is trying to explain his strength inevery touch. For instance ; I said just now, * You see thesuns epaulettes before the sun. Well, donHyou, usually, as it rises ? Do you not con-tinually mistake a luminous cloud for it, orwonder where it is, behind one

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