INTRODUCTION xxxix

Two of the studies of St. Ursula, here mentioned, are in the Oxford Collection.¹ The most elaborate of his drawings at St. Mark’s is at Brantwood;² the study of the Scuola di San Marco, repeatedly mentioned in the above letters, is now reproduced as the frontispiece to the third volume of The Stones of Venice (Vol. XI.); a drawing of Casa Foscari and the Frari is in Mrs. Cunliffe’s collection;³ and one of the St. Jean d’Acre Pillars is Plate XXI. in Vol. XIV. These were all works of some elaboration; but during these months, and especially in the winter, he made a large number of rapid pencil sketches. Several of these are here reproduced (Plates A-D); a pencil sketch of Murano, made at the same time, has already been given (Plate B in Vol. X., p. 40).⁴

In order that he might study architectural details the more closely, he procured casts of some of his favourite capitals; these he described in Fors Clavigera, and one of the casts he sent home to his Museum at Sheffield.⁵

The literary part of Ruskin’s work, devoted to studies in Venetian history, led him into many interesting byways. He had a group of friends in Venice who were equally competent and willing to help him. There was Edward Cheney, the connoisseur and collector, who had entertained Sir Walter Scott at Rome forty-four years since,⁶ and who, in ripe old age, was still as cheery, and as caustic, as ever. “Mr. Cheney’s sayings,” says Ruskin to Rawdon Brown, “are very sweet and kind. Who would ever think there was such a salt satire in the make of him! I’ve just come on a most valuable bit of him in my old book.⁷ What a lazy boy he is; why doesn’t he write a history of

¹ Two notes to Mrs. Severn, printed in W. G. Collingwood’s Life and Work of John Ruskin (p. 325), refer to these studies: “December 9.-I hope to send home a sketch or two which will show I’m not quite losing my head yet. I must show at Oxford some reason for my staying so long in Venice.” “December 24.-I do think St. Ursula’s lips are coming pretty-and her eyelids-but, oh me, her hair ! Toni, Mr. Brown’s gondolier, says she’s all right-and he’s a grave and closelooking judge, you know.”

² See Vol. X. p. lxiv.

³ No. 109 in the Ruskin Exhibition at the Society of Painters in WaterColours, 1901.

⁴ Mr. Wedderburn possesses a water-colour sketch of the Salute with the Abbazia adjoining, on which Ruskin wrote “Left off, beaten and tired, 1876.”

⁵ See Letter 77, § 9.

⁶ See Lockhart’s Life of Scott, vol. vii. pp. 368 seq. “Cheney is a kind of Beckford,” Ruskin had written to his father (October 11, 1851). “I’m not sure but that there is not some slight affectation of resemblance; only he lets people into his house, which I believe Beckford never would.” See also Vol. X. p. xxvii. Cheney was born in 1803, and died in 1884. His library of illuminated manuscripts and books was sold in June 1886; his collection of objects of art and antiquity in May 1905 (the Capel-Cure sale, the property having passed to Cheney’s nephew).

⁷ In a later letter it appears that the bit in question was Rawdon Brown’s; the friend unnamed in Vol. IX. p. 420.

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