Cover of Val d'Arno Ten Lectures on the Tuscan Art Directly Antecedent to the Florentine Year of Victories; Given Before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1873 — Edition Insights

Val d'Arno Ten Lectures on the Tuscan Art Directly Antecedent to the Florentine Year of Victories; Given Before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1873 — Edition Insights

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In Category - Painting Sculpture

Authors: Ruskin, John, 1819-1900 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2005 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Art -- Italy -- Tuscany Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 53,521

Reading time 233 min

Text sections 6

This digital edition of Val d'Arno Ten Lectures on the Tuscan Art Directly Antecedent to the Florentine Year of Victories; Given Before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1873 — Edition Insights is described by source-level measurements including 53,521 words, 3 hr 53 min estimated reading time, and 6 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 27.8 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Art -- Italy -- Tuscany,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #8523

Ruskin's ten Oxford lectures on Tuscan art before the Florentine 'Year of Victories' (1250) examine the transition from feudal to civic power through architecture, sculpture, and political imagery, with close analysis of the Pisan pulpits and the structural logic of Gothic tracery.

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File: pg8523

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You were surprised, I hope, (if you were attentive enough to catch the points in what I just now read from Vasari,) at my venturing to bring before you, just after I had been using violent language against the Sienese for breaking up the work of Quercia, that incidental sentence giving account of the much more disrespectful destruction, by the Perugians, of the tombs of Pope Urban IV., and Martin IV.

Sending was made for John, you see, first, when Pope Urban IV. died in Perugia--whose tomb was to be carved by John; the Greek fountain being a secondary business. But the tomb was so well destroyed, afterwards, that only a few relics remained scattered here and there.

The tomb, I have not the least doubt, was Gothic;--and the breaking of it to pieces was not in order to restore it afterwards, that a living architect might get the job of restoration. Here is a stone out of one of Giovanni Pisano's loveliest Gothic buildings, which I myself saw with my own eyes dashed out, that a modern builder might be paid for putting in another. But Pope Urban's tomb was not destroyed to such end. There was no qualm of the belly, driving the hammer,--qualm of the conscience probably; at all events, a deeper or loftier antagonism than one on points of taste, or economy.

44. You observed that I described this Greek profane manner of design as properly belonging to _civil_ buildings, as opposed not only to ecclesiastical buildings, but to military ones. Justice, or Righteousness, and Veracity, are the characters of Greek art. These _may_ be opposed to religion, when religion becomes fantastic; but they _must_ be opposed to war, when war becomes unjust. And if, perchance, fantastic religion and unjust war happen to go hand in hand, your Greek artist is likely to use his hammer against them spitefully enough.

45. His hammer, or his Greek fire. Hear now this example of the engineering ingenuities of our Pisan papa, in his younger days.

"The Florentines having begun, in Niccola's time, to throw down many towers, which had been built in a barbarous manner through the whole city; either that the people might be less hurt, by their means, in the fights that often took place between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, or else that there might be greater security for the State, it appeared to them that it would be very difficult to ruin the Tower of the Death-watch, which was in the place of St. John, because it had its walls built with such a grip in them that the stones could not be stirred with the pickaxe, and also because it was of the loftiest; whereupon Nicholas, causing the tower to be cut, at the foot of it, all the length of one of its sides; and closing up the cut, as he made it, with short (wooden) under-props, about a yard long, and setting fire to them, when the props were burned, the tower fell, and broke itself nearly all to pieces: which was held a thing so ingenious and so useful for such affairs, that it has since passed into a custom, so that when it is needful, in this easiest manner, any edifice may be thrown down."

46. 'When it is needful.' Yes; but when is that? If instead of the towers of the Death-watch in the city, one could ruin the towers of the Death-watch of evil pride and evil treasure in men's hearts, there would be need enough for such work both in Florence and London. But the walls of those spiritual towers have still stronger 'grip' in them, and are fireproof with a vengeance.

"Le mure me parean die ferro fosse, . . . e el mi dixe, il fuoco eterno Chentro laffoca, le dimostra rosse."

But the towers in Florence, shattered to fragments by this ingenious engineer, and the tombs in Perugia, which his son will carve, only that they also may be so well destroyed that only a few relics remain, scattered up and down the church,--are these, also, only the iron towers, and the red-hot tombs, of the city of Dis?

47. In order to understand the relation of the tradesmen and working men, including eminently the artist, to the general life of the thirteenth century, I must lay before you the clearest elementary charts I can of the course which the fates of Italy were now appointing for her.

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Ruskin opens the first lecture by fixing a precise date—20 October 1250—when Florentine merchants deposed their Podesta and installed a Captain of the People, marking what he calls the end of the feudal system. This political event is the pivot around which the entire lecture series turns: the art of Tuscany in the decades immediately before and after that year. Rather than offering a survey, Ruskin builds each lecture around a single monument or motif—Niccola Pisano's pulpit, the Pisan Baptistery door, the development of window tracery—and reads it as evidence of a shift in social and spiritual values. The lectures were delivered orally at Oxford in Michaelmas Term 1873, and Ruskin notes that he printed them as spoken, a decision he later calls 'a great mistake.'

The Pisan Pulpits as Political Documents

Ruskin devotes his first two lectures to Niccola Pisano and Giovanni Pisano, but he is less interested in their biographies than in what their pulpits reveal about the society that commissioned them. He points out that the trefoils in Niccola's pulpit are 'struck out … so roughly that there is not a true compass curve or section in any part of it.' This roughness, he argues, is deliberate: a sharper line would 'draw away the attention from the sculpture.' The observation is typical of Ruskin's method—he treats formal choices as moral and intellectual signals. He contrasts the Pisan work with French Gothic precision, implying that the Italian masters valued narrative content over technical finish. The pulpit becomes a document of civic pride, not merely a liturgical object.

Tracery as Anatomy: Structure, Breath, and Sight

In later lectures Ruskin turns to window tracery, using an extended anatomical analogy. He compares two contemporary analysts—Professor Willis, who studied tracery as a skeleton, and Viollet-le-Duc, who treated it as a respiratory system—and proposes a third approach: tracery as the building's 'eyes,' shaped by what it is meant to light. He asks his audience to consider the windows of Westminster Abbey, Chartres, and Milan, and then to guess the shape of windows in the Sistine Chapel or the Scuola di San Rocco. The point is that in some buildings the window is the soul; in others, the wall is. This distinction, he implies, is not merely aesthetic but reflects different conceptions of sacred space and the role of imagery within it.

The Tyrrhene Sea and the Shifting Geography of Power

Ruskin repeatedly anchors his argument in physical geography. The title 'Val d'Arno' itself signals a landscape, and the lectures move between Pisa, Florence, and the Tyrrhene coast. He notes that Dante names the Adige, not the Po, when describing Lombardy, because the Adige valley was the route by which German imperial power descended into Italy. This attention to river valleys and sea routes is not decorative: Ruskin treats topography as a force in history. The 'Tyrrhene Sea' lecture (Lecture IX) likely considers maritime influence on Tuscan art, though the excerpts do not reveal its full argument. What is clear is that Ruskin never lets the reader forget that these works of art were made in specific places, shaped by trade, conquest, and the movement of armies.

The Bell on the Tower of the Lion

Ruskin's opening image—the bell hung on the tower of the Lion, rung to summon the new Captain of the People—recurs as a symbol throughout the lectures. He calls it 'the first blow' that began 'the tolling for the passing away of the feudal system' and 'the joy-peal … for whatever deserves joy, in that of our modern liberties.' The bell is both a historical fact and a metaphor for the sound of political change. Ruskin does not celebrate this change uncritically; his tone is measured, and he quotes Dante's lament for the loss of 'courtesy and valour' after Frederick II's death. The bell thus carries a double meaning—liberation and loss—and Ruskin uses it to frame the entire series as an inquiry into what was gained and what was sacrificed when the medieval commune replaced feudal lordship.

Readers coming to Val d'Arno should expect a demanding, digressive text that moves freely between art criticism, political history, and personal reflection. Ruskin assumes his audience knows the monuments he describes and does not pause to illustrate them (the Project Gutenberg edition contains no plates). The lectures reward careful attention to his recurring images—bells, rivers, trefoils, and the 'eyes' of buildings—and to the way he ties formal analysis to the social conditions of production. Approach each lecture as an essay in its own right, not as a chapter in a continuous narrative.

Reading about the shift from feudal strength to civic structure in Val d'Arno brought back a quiet afternoon in a stone chapel, where I traced the carved pulpit's folds with my eyes, feeling time dissolve. That same hush returned years later, turning the crisp pages of Illuminated manuscripts in classical and mediaeval times, their art and their technique — Inside the Classic, where gold leaf seemed to hold its breath.