Identifier: sevenlampsofarchrusk (find matches)
Title: The seven lamps of architecture
Year: 1883 (1880s)
Authors: Ruskin, John, 1819-1900
Subjects: Architecture
Publisher: Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent, (Eng.) : G. Allen
Contributing Library: University Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Digitizing Sponsor: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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efile and ridge of rock, yet never losing the unity of itsillumined swell and shadowy decline ; and the head ofevery mighty tree, rich with tracery of leaf and bough,yet terminated against the sky by a true line, androunded by a green horizon, which, multiplied in thedistant forest, makes it look bossy from above; allthese mark, for a great and honoured law, that diffusionof light for which the Byzantine ornaments were de-signed ; and show us that those builders had truersympathy with what God made majestic, than the self-contemplating and self-contented Greek. I know thatthey are barbaric in comparison; but there is a powerin their barbarism of sterner tone, a power not sophis-tic nor penetrative, but embracing and mysterious ; apower faithful more than thoughtful, which conceivedand felt more than it created ; a power that neithercomprehended nor ruled itself, but worked and wan-dered as it listed, like mountain streams and winds;and which could not rest in the expression or seizure
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THE LAMP OF POWER. 89 of finite form. It could not bury itself in acanthus leaves. Its imagery was taken from the shadows of the storms and hills, and had fellowship with the night and day of the earth itself XVI. I have endeavoured to give some idea of one of thehollow balls of stone which, surrounded by flowing leafage, occurin varied succession on the architrave of the central gate of St.Marks at Venice, in Plate I. fig. 3. It seems to me singularlybeautiful in its unity of lightness, and delicacy of detail, withbreadth of light. It looks as if its leaves had been sensitive, andhad risen and shut themselves into a bud at some sudden touch,and would presently fall back again into their wild flow. Thecornices of San Michele of Lucca, seen above and below the arch,in Plate VI., show the effect of heavy leafage and thick stemsarranged on a surface whose curve is a simple quadrant, thelight dying from off them as it turns. It would be difficult, as Ithink, to invent any thing more noble

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