PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION 15

the Gothic mind, they have used; with such results as I have above instanced.

9. It is curious that this architectural analysis, the only part of the book which has been read, is also the only part which is incomplete and unsatisfactory; owing to my not having enough dwelt upon the distinction between the Byzantine and Arab temper, the one being the channel through which Greek law was brought to bear upon Norman license,¹ the other that by which the mindless luxury of the East in great part developed the worst features of later “Arabesques” during the revival. Now, though I knew, and often stated,² during the execution of my work at Venice, that the Pisan Romanesque and Tuscan Gothic were the finer schools of architecture (that of Venice being chosen for my subject only for the simplicity of its history), I had not at that time enough acquaintance with the work of Nicolo Pisano and Arnolfo to place in its true rank the general Gothic of the 13th century in Italy, as opposed to that of France and the Rhine.

10. The lectures on architecture which I am preparing for delivery at Oxford³ will place all these matters in clearer light, and, if I live, some portions of the Stones of Venice will ultimately be published in such abstract as will make at once the first purpose of the book apparent, and its final statements conclusive; but it will be with fewer plates, and those less elaborate.⁴ The state of the old plates, which the death of my very dear friend Thomas Lupton⁵ prevents me from retouching, compels me, in justice to the purchasers,

¹ [See on this point Val d’ Arno, § 193.]

² [See, for instance, below, ch. i. § 29, p. 40; ch. xxvi. § 2, p. 348.]

³ [No lectures so entitled were delivered. But the reference is, no doubt, to the course of lectures on Tuscan Art, delivered in Michaelmas Term, 1873, and published in 1874 under the title of Val d’ Arno. In that book the points noted in § 9 above were treated: see reference in preceding note.]

⁴ [An intention partly fulfilled in the “Travellers’ Edition” of 1879: see below, Preface to that edition.]

⁵ [Thomas Goff Lupton (1791-1873) studied mezzotint-engraving under George Clint, A.R.A; in 1822 received a gold medal for his successful use of steel in that process; was employed by Turner on the “Liber Studiorum,” and by Ruskin on Stones of Venice, Examples of the Architecture of Venice, and Modern Painters; engraved the plates for Turner’s Harbours of England, with text by Ruskin, 1856.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]