 |
 |
 |
A version of ‘Solomon’ which is a plausible reading of the inscription and of Ruskin’s writing. Wisdom, represented by Solomon, is produced by an educational system starting from the trivium of grammar (represented by Priscian), rhetoric (represented by Cicero), and logic (represented by Aristotle), followed for advanced students by the quadrivium of arithmetic (represented by Pythagoras), geometry (represented by Euclid, or Archimedes according to Selvatico), astronomy (represented by Ptolemy), and music (represented by Tubal Cain, of Orpheus according to Selvatico). Ruskin quotes the Selvatico version in the published version, but Selvatico does not seem to give weight to the link with trivium/quadrivium or the conventional representation of the branches of learning. Compare Ruskin’s account of the frescoes in the Spanish Chapel in the Strait Gate, the fifth of the Mornings in Florence, Works, 23.382-408 [n/a].
|
|
|
[Version 0.05: May 2008]