xxvi INTRODUCTION

toil. To the plates illustrating the book, reference is made presently (p. xlix.); but the drawings which were engraved are only a few of those that were made. The woodcuts similarly represent only a small number of hundreds of careful diagrams, figures, and sketches of architectural details, which the author drew during the preparation of this book.¹ Sheets with pen drawings on them or with sketches in pencil and wash attached to them, are no doubt fair copies of the author’s first graphic memoranda, just as the diaries were of his written notes.

Pre-occupied though Ruskin was with architectural detail, he found time to note also in his diary the broader effects of sea and sky, to which Venice owes no small portion of her charm:-

Tuesday, Nov. 20.-I got chilled to-day as I was drawing in the arcade of Doge’s Palace, and ran away to the Rialto to warm myself, ... [and then on] to the quay of Murano. It was a grey day; the sky lay in calm horizontal bars far to the northern horizon; then it suddenly broke to an open, long gulph of amber green; and against this, clear in rainy air, rose the chains of the Tyrolese Alps-one gloomy, serrated rank of purple grey, so clear that every field of snow was seen on their summits, though untouched by light, and all grim and wild against the sky. But at the end of the range, right over Murano-we being on the quay of the Jesuiti-burning crests of snow were seen mingled among bars of cloud and gaps of sky, relieved against grey sea cloud behind. The sun was seen setting, the calm space of sky changed not-the clouds, as motionless as the hills, and as defined-held up their waved curtain from off the field of gold; and the dark mountain chain, countless in its serration, and gathering together of pointed peaks, lay as sharp and shattered against the amber air, as if it had been a mass of near Highland hills.

Sunday, December 30.-I was to-day rambling, or rather running, among the quiet and melancholy canals which extend between the Madonna dell’ Orto and Sta. Fosca:-the winter sun glowing on the deep red brick, and the canal beneath turned into a chasm of light-divided into sharp squares of blue and vermilion, as if the houses were standing on a scarlet carpet. They are lonely and stagnant canals, bordered for the most part by the dead walls of gardens, now waste ground; or by patches of dark mud, with decayed black gondolas lying keel upmost, sinking into the putrid and black ground gradually; or by remnant of palace wall, never finished, of which the doors and the angle shafts alone remain. Farther on, one comes to detached groups of low and filthy houses, with mud paths trodden hard between

¹ Several such sheets covered with notes and drawings and diagrams still remain. There are 166 at Brantwood, and others in the possession of Mr. Wedderburn and Mr. Allen.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]