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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rd Perfect finish Lindsay, that the best designers of Italy v^/ere also the characterizes • ° • aldiltecuire Hiost carcful in their workmanship; and that thepainting. Stability and finish of their masonry, mosaic, or otherw^ork whatsoever, were always perfect in proportion tothe apparent improbability of the great designers con-descending to the care of details among us so despised.Not only do I fully admit and re-assert this most im-portant fact, but I would insist upon perfect and mostdelicate finish in its right place, as a characteristic ofall the highest schools of architecture, as much as it isof those of painting. But on the other hand, as perfectfinish belongs to the perfected art, a progressive finishbelongs to progressive art; and I do not think that anymore fatal sign of a stupor or numbness settling uponthat undeveloped art could possibly be detected, thanthat it had been taken aback by its own execution, andthat the workmanship had gone ahead of the design; Plate XII
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THE LAMP OF LIFE. 155 while, even in my admission of absolute finish in theright place, as an attribute of the perfected school, Imust reserve to myself the right of answering in myown way the two very important questions—what isfinish ? and what is its right place ? VII. But in illustrating either of these points, we must re-member that the correspondence of workmanship with thought is,in existent examples, interfered with by the adoption of the designsof an advanced period by the workmen of a rude one. All thebeginnings of Christian architecture are of this kind, and thenecessary consequence is of course an increase of the visibleinterval between the power of realisation and the beauty of theidea. We have at first an imitation, almost savage in its rudeness,of a classical design ; as the art advances, the design is modifiedby a mixture of Gothic grotesqueness, and the execution morecomplete, until a harmony is established between the two, inwhich balance they advance to new perfec

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