Finally, when the rose tints leave the clouds, I go and spend a quarter of an hour beside the tomb of Ilaria di Caretto. . . . [Here follows the description of the statue, given below, p. 122 n.] With this I end my day, and return home as the lamps begin to burn in the Madonna shrines, to read Dante, and to write to you. . .

Love to my mother. Ever, my dearest Father,

Your most affectionate son,
J. RUSKIN.

From Lucca Ruskin passed to Pisa, where the Campo Santo with its frescoes opened to him a new world of simple and sincere religious art, and became to him, he says, "a veritable Palestine." His letters soon show him absorbed in copying and recopying from Giotto and Simon Memmi, and Benozzo Gozzoli and Orcagna. It was a graphic Bible that he found spread out before him :

"... You cannot guess (he writes to his father, May 15,) how these men must have read their Bible, how deeply the patriarchal spirit seems written in their hearts. I have been drawing from Benozzo's life of Abraham, which is as full and abundant as the scripture itself, nothing missed, though a good deal added. Little Ishmael fighting little Isaac to Sarah's great indignation, being one of such passages,—a comment on the 'saw the son of the Egyptian mocking' of the Bible [Genesis xxi. 9]; but this is succeeded by the most heavenly Hagar in the Wilderness. I shall set to work on her to-morrow. To-day I have been finishing an easy bit (easy because small and well made out)— Abraham parting from the Angels when they go towards Sodom.2 It is a beautiful observance of the scriptural history that while three angels came to Abraham, only two come to Sodom at even [Genesis xviii. 2, xix. 1]. In the fresco the central angel is rising, looking back towards Sodom with his hand raised in the attitude of condemnation, afterwards adopted by M. Angelo in the Judgment. The two angels turn towards Sodom, one with his eyes steadfast on the city, the other looking back to Abraham. The latter turns away, with his hands folded in entire faith and resignation, but with such a quivering distress about the lips and appeal for pity in the eye that I have had the tears in mine over and over again while I was drawing it. The plaster on which is this passage has already risen in a blister from the wall, and will be blown into the Arno in dust before the year is out."

Everything at Pisa delighted him-the Cathedral, the little church of

1 Epilogue, § 7, below, p. 350.

2 See Plate 10, facing p. 316, below.

La Spina, the sunsets on the Carrara mountains; "but," he writes (May 18):

"the Campo Santo is the thing. I never believed the patriarchal his-
tory before, but I do now, for I have seen it. You cannot conceive the
vividness and fulness of conception of these great old men.
In spite
of every violation of the common confounded rules of art, of anach-
ronisms and fancies, the boldest and wildest-Lorenzo de' Medici figur-
ing as an Egyptian sorcerer, and Castruccio degli Interminelli coming
in over and over again long before the flood, and all the patriarchs in the
costume of the thirteenth century—N'importe; it is Abraham himself
still. Abraham and Adam, and Cain, Rachel and Rebekah, all are there,
real, visible, created, substantial, such as they were, as they must have
been; one cannot look at them without being certain that they have
lived; and the angels, great and real and powerful, that you feel the
very wind from their wings upon your face, and yet expect to see them
depart every instant into heaven; it is enough to convert one to look
upon them; one comes away like the women from the sepulchre,
having seen a vision of angels which said that he was Alive. And the
might of it is to do all this with such fearless, bold, simple truth, no
slurring, no cloudiness, nor darkness; all is God's good light and fair
truth; Abraham sits close to you, entertaining the angels, you may touch
him and them; and there is a woman behind him, bringing the angels
some real positive pears, and the angels have knives and forks and
glasses, and a table-cloth as white as snow, and there they sit with their
wings folded:
: you may put your finger on the eyes of their plumes, like
St. Thomas, and believe. And the centre angel has lifted his hand and
is telling Abraham-his very lips moving-that Sarah shall have a son,
and there is no doubt on Abraham's face, only he holds his knife hard
for wonder and gladness. And Sarah is listening, holding back the
curtains of the tent."

His manner of life was as strenuous at Pisa (May 18) as at Lucca :

:

“Breakfast at 7, to work at 8, work till one; or on Thursdays and Saturdays till 12, when I go to call on the Professor Rossini and see more pictures. Dine at 2; to work again at 3, always in Campo Santo; stop at 5, walk about town, or as yesterday up on the roof of La Spina, to get the details. Then up tower to see sunset on Carrara mountains, home at past 7 or 8; tea and write till 9, or longer, if I am not sleepy; bed at 10."

When his portfolio was well filled at Pisa, Ruskin moved on to

1 See on this subject the contrast which Ruskin drew between early Christian art and the religious paintings of our own day: Academy Notes, 1875, s. Nos. 584 and 129.

Florence, where his "new discoveries," he says, became yet "more absorbing."1 The novelty and enthusiasm are well expressed in a letter to his father:

FLORENCE, June 4.-. . . I went yesterday to Santa Maria Novella, and was very much taken aback. There is the Madonna of Cimabue,2 which all Florence followed with trumpets to the church; there is the great chapel painted by Orcagna, with the Last Judgment, at least 500 figures; there is the larger chapel with 14 vast and untouched frescoes, besides the roof, of Domenico Ghirlandajo; there is the tomb of Filippo Strozzi; there is the great crucifixion of Giotto; there, finally, are three perfectly preserved works of Fra Angelico, the centre one of which is as near heaven as human hand or mind will ever or can ever go. Talk of chiaroscuro and colour; give me those burnished angel wings of which every plume is wrought out in beaten gold, in zones of crimson and silver colour alternately, which play and flash like, and with far more rainbow hue about them than, the breasts of the Valparaiso birds, which, however, will give you some idea of the effect and power of light in them. And then the faces, without one shadow of earth or mortality about them, all glorified. . . .

He studied principally the primitives, without, however, neglecting the later painters. His continued and increased admiration of Michael Angelo appears throughout this volume; but already he had begun to trace in the work of the crowning masters what he afterwards described as the writing on the wall. "Raphael and Michael Angelo," he says (June 4), "were great fellows, but from all I can see they have been the ruin of art."

Ruskin's studies at Florence may be traced in nearly every chapter of this volume. His note-books show that he did not spare himself. He was sometimes at work by five o'clock in the morning. The galleries, the churches and convents, the private palaces, were all laboriously explored; and those were the days when many works of art, now gathered together in galleries and museums, were still preserved — or more truthfully, neglected-in their several shrines. He felt the desultoriness of the work, but persevered notwithstanding:

"It requires a good deal of courage, mind you," he writes in a letter to his mother (Florence, June 26), "to work as I am working at present -obliged to take a shallow glance at everything and to master nothing. I am not studying a branch of science in which I feel steady progress,

1 Epilogue, § 10, below, p. 351.

2 See Mornings in Florence, § 34.

3 See Lectures on Architecture and Painting, §§ 125–127.

but gathering together a mass of evidence from a number of subjects,
and I have to think, before everything that I see, of its bearings in a
hundred ways.
Architecture, sculpture, anatomy, botany, music, all
must be thought of and in some degree touched upon, and one is
always obliged to stop in the middle of one thing to take note of
another of all modes of study the least agreeable, and least effectual.
For instance, I am going now to the Palais Pitti. I have to look at its
stones outside and compare them with the smooth work of modern
buildings;1 when I go in, I shall sit down to study a bit of Rubens
for an illustration of my book; 2 this Rubens leads me into a train of
thought respecting composition diametrically opposite to that which
would be induced by a Raffaelle."

While Ruskin was thus writing to his mother, his father was writing to him to deplore the falling off in the son's poetry. This tour of 1845 was the last occasion, as we have seen, on which he was at all seriously or determinedly to cultivate his faculty of versification. He had sent home from Florence the lines on "Mont Blanc Revisited," and from Pisa, a month earlier, those "Written among the Basses Alpes."3 His father's verdict was for once severe (June 26):—

"I am, to speak truth, disappointed in the last lines sent home, and you see by enclosed Harrison is of same opinion. The Scythian Banquet Song, which you think little of, was the greatest of all your poetical productions. All the Herodotean pieces show real power, and have a spice of the devil in them. I mean nothing irreverent, but the fervour and fury and passion of true poetry. It is cruel in me to ask you to write for me; you should never write poetry but when you cannot help it. Mama objected to your highest poetry being published, but she was rather surprised at "The Old Seaman" on taking it up. The first verse of "Mont Blanc Revisited"-"Oh mount beloved". -seems feeble. Your poetry at present has got among your prose, and it may be well to leave it there till the important book be done, which I am certain will overflow with poetry. Never mind my cravings for little poems, nor Murray's for articles. The Book has told, and it is important to pour into the opened ear of the public all you have to say, boldly, surely, and determinedly beyond contradiction, as far as full knowledge of the subject can protect any one from contradiction."

Age quod agis.

1 For the architecture of the Palazzo Pitti, see below, sec. i. ch. x. § 3 n., p. 137.

? Ruskin does not seem to have used in Modern Painters any illustrations, pictorial or otherwise, from Rubens's pictures at Florence; but his diary shows that he studied them carefully.

3 See Vol. II. pp. 233, 238.

The motto which J. J. Ruskin had chosen : see Vol. I. p. xi.

Ruskin's answer is marked by great good sense. He felt within himself that he was now beginning what he afterwards called his first man's work; and, though the poetical impulse was dead, he was conscious of increasing grip and grit. But he is not quite just in what he says about the self-absorption of his mind. The lines "Written among the Basses Alpes" are indeed charged with little compassion, but they are significant of that awakening interest in human conduct and social justice which was soon to colour all his work and thought:

PARMA, July 10.- . . . I am not surprised at the lines being so far inferior, but I do not think I have lost power. I have only lost the exciting circumstances. The life I lead is far too comfortable and regular, too luxurious, too hardening. I see nothing of human life, but waiters, doganiers, and beggars. I get into no scrapes, suffer no inconveniences, and am subject to no species of excitement except that arising from art, which I conceive to be too abstract in its nature to become productive of poetry, unless combined with experience of living passion. I don't see how it is possible for a person who gets up at four, goes to bed at ten, eats ices when he is hot, beef when he is hungry, gets rid of all claims of charity by giving money which he hasn't earned, and of those of compassion by treating all distress more as picturesque than as real-I don't see how it is at all possible for such a person to write good poetry. . . . Nevertheless I believe my mind has made great progress in many points since that poetical time. I perhaps could not-but I certainly would not, now write such things. I might write more tamely, but I think I should write better sense, and possibly if I were again under such morbid excitement, I might write as strongly, but with more manly meaning. I believe, however, the time for it has past.

From Parma, whither Ruskin had gone from Florence, he wrote again to his father on the same day, summing up in the form of a class list the conclusions of his studies at Lucca, Pisa, and Florence :

66

PARMA, July 10.— . . . I have pretty well now arranged my scale of painters; I may shift them about here and there a little. I am not sure of the places of all, but I regard them pretty nearly in this order and I shall not alter very much.

CLASS 1

Pure Religious Art. The School of Love.

1. Fra Angelico. Forms a class by himself; he is not an artist properly so-called, but an inspired saint. 2. Perugino. 3. Pinturicchio.

1 The words occur in the MS. notes for the second lecture of his Oxford course, Readings in Modern Painters."