xl INTRODUCTION

Venice.”¹ The correspondence between Ruskin and Rawdon Brown, now in the possession of the British Museum, shows how much Ruskin valued his friend’s assistance on all points of history. They met very often, and on other days notes, and books, and manuscripts passed between “Papa” Brown and his “loving figlio, J. Ruskin.” The discovery of an inscription new to him, among the mosaics of St. Mark’s, had a peculiar significance to Ruskin, as embodying the political ideal of a well-ordered state. He records the discovery in his diary:-

“VENICE, May 21 st.-Yesterday found in St. Mark’s the Duke and his people, and had a glorious hour, in the quiet gallery, with the service going on. I alone up there, and the message, by the words of the old mosaicist, given me.”

This is the mosaic described in St. Mark’s Rest, § 113 (p. 296), as “the most precious historical picture of any in worldly gallery.” Ruskin wrote off at once to one of his artist-assistants to commission a study of this new-found treasure:-

“[VENICE, May 20th, 1877.]

“MY DEAR MURRAY,-Can you join me on St. Mark’s Place to-morrow at half-past nine, with your drawing materials? I am going up into the gallery, behind organ at St. Mark’s, to study a mosaic plainly visible, and of extreme beauty and importance. A sketch of it, such as you have made of the Simeon’s robe pictures,² will be the most important work you or I have yet done in Venice, and if it could be begun to-morrow I would wait till Wednesday to see it in some advancement. The figures are size of life, in dresses of exquisite dark richness, with white and black crosses for relief. Colours chiefly purple, green, and blue on the gold ground. Subject, written above, thus:-

‘Priests, clergy, people and Duke serene in mind.’

‘Pontifices-cleri-populus-Dux mento serenus.’

As the root of all Serene Highness is not this worth drawing?

“Ever, with much love to your wife,

“Affectionately yours,

“J. RUSKIN.”³

But none of Ruskin’s historical researches pleased him so much as his discovery of an early inscription on the Church of S. Giacomo di Rialto. “There are none of the rewarding accidents of my life’s work,” he

¹ Undated letter in the British Museum.

² A study now at Sheffield: see below, p. lvi.

³ This letter is reprinted from pp. 51, 52 of Letters on Art and Literature by J. Ruskin, edited by Thomas J. Wise (privately issued 1894). Mr Murray’s study of the mosaics is shown on Plate LIX.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]