xxxvi INTRODUCTION

be commemorated by a memorial tablet on the new and more pretentious edifice. His own impressions of the place were duly recorded in a letter to Mrs. Arthur Severn:-

“(VENICE, 13th Feb. ’ 77.)-... I couldn’t write yesterday, for I was changing lodgings. The Grand Hotel was really too expensive; I was getting quite ruined, so I came away to a little inn fronting the Giudecca, and commanding sunrise and sunset both, where I have two rooms for six francs a day, instead of one for twelve. Also, which I find a great advantage, I look along the water instead of down on it, and get perfectly picturesque views of boats instead of masthead ones, and I think I shall be comfy. St. Ursula is nearly done at last I think, then I begin a gold and purple arch of St. Mark’s, for spring work.

“You’ll have such an explosion of fireworks¹ (poor dear old Harrison, were he but here to see! ...) next month if I keep well-Venetian history and pictures!”

The eight months which Ruskin spent in Venice were a busy and a productive time. He wrote the Guide to the Principal Pictures in the Academy, the greater part of St. Mark’s Rest, and the letter to Count Zorzi on restorations at St. Mark’s. The monthly issue of Fors Clavigera continued, and he was also passing through the press the later parts of Mornings in Florence and Sir Philip Sidney’s Psalter (Rock Honeycomb). The study of Carpaccio, which is a leading topic in his Venetian writings of this period, meant a great deal more than any process of mere word-painting. As with Tintoret and Turner and Luini and Botticelli, so with Carpaccio Ruskin’s descriptions were based on long and laborious studies with the brush. He spent many weeks in making studies of St. Ursula’s Dream, and was greatly pleased with the facilities which the authorities gave him,² for at that time the picture was hung high above the line.³ Letters to Mrs. Arthur Severn report progress with his drawings:-

“(September 16.)-I’m in a great state of effervescence to-day, for they’re-what do you think-going to take my dear little princess down for me, and give her to me all to myself where I can look at her all day long. It really happens very Fors-y that the very person whom I found facing the frescoes by Cimabue at Assisi⁴ should be

¹ That is, in Fors Clavigera. W. H. Harrison, Ruskin’s old friend and mentor, had died in 1874.

² Compare Fors Clavigera, Letter 71, § 2, and Art of England, § 71.

³ “High up, in an out-of-the-way corner, seen by no man-nor woman neither-of all pictures in Europe the one I would choose for a gift” (Fors Clavigera, Letter 40, § 12).

⁴ See Vol. XXIII. p. xliii.

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