 |
 |
 |
In Seven Lamps of Architecture at Works, 8.206: Ruskin had referred to Woods opinions on the ugliness of St. Mark’s and the Ducal Palace. At Works, 9.55f Ruskin argued that such judgements, by Woods, and by those who agreed with him in their responses to Seven Lamps of Architecture, are the result of distortions caused by the Renaissance. He argued, moreover, that it was wrong to see it as ‘completely a subject of opinion’. Ruskin had had a ‘clear conviction that there was a law, that ‘good architecture might be indisputably discerned and divided from the bad’. He had set himself to establish the law and had found the task simpler than he had hoped. However Ruskin’s observations in Bourges at the end of this journey at Notebook M2 p.176 that ‘it is utterly futile to condemn or criticise because it is not in this rule or that’ suggest a view closer to that of Woods, not in its conclusions, but in its relationship to what might be seen as a Quaker version of ‘theoria’ set out by Woods as the basis for his judgements. A similar approach is evident at Bourges - Sheet 188. Ruskin never claimed consistency as a virtue.
|
|
|
[Version 0.05: May 2008]