Cardiff University | Prifysgol Caerdydd ORCA
Online Research @ Cardiff 
WelshClear Cookie - decide language by browser settings

Building Ruskin's Italy: Watching architecture

Kite, Stephen ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6320-4110 2012. Building Ruskin's Italy: Watching architecture. Farnham: Ashgate.

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

Based on extensive fieldwork, and research into John Ruskin's still little-interpreted archival material, notebooks and drawings (in the Ruskin Library, Lancaster University, UK and elsewhere), Stephen Kite offers an unprecedented account of the evolution of Ruskin's architectural thinking and observation in the context of Italy where his watching of building achieved its greatest intensity. Venice naturally figures large in a work that also examines other key sites including Verona, Lucca, Pisa, Florence, Milan and Monza; here, the fabrics are vividly read in their contexts against the rich evidence of Ruskin's diaries, his pocket-book sketches, architectural worksheets, drawings, and daguerrotypes (the early form of photography), and the drafts and published editions of the texts. Kite presents the complex story of Ruskin's visual thinking in architecture as a narrative of deepening interpretation and representation, focusing on the humbler monuments of Italy. He shows how Ruskin's early picturesque naturalism was transformed by the realisation that to understand the built realities confronting him in Italy demanded a closer engagement with the substance of the stones themselves; reflecting Ruskin's sense of his task as a near-archaeological gleaning and gathering of remains 'hidden in many a grass grown court, and silent pathway, and lightless canal'.

Item Type: Book
Book Type: Authored Book
Date Type: Publication
Status: Published
Schools: Architecture
Subjects: N Fine Arts > N Visual arts (General) For photography, see TR
N Fine Arts > NA Architecture
Publisher: Ashgate
ISBN: 9781409437963
Related URLs:
Last Modified: 20 Oct 2022 09:22
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/31663

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item Edit Item