Most Popular Books by John Ruskin

"The Arena Chapel in Padua was completed in 1303; Giotto, then considered the preeminent painter in Italy, was commissioned to paint it in 1306. The resulting fresco cycle, detailing the history, birth, life, and death of Christ, ranks among the greatest artworks ever created. John Ruskin helped redefine art criticism in the nineteenth century through his attention to detail, his playful and engaging prose, and the conviction with which he discussed the subjects that mattered most to him. Ruskin''s ekphrastic writing became a way for readers to approach the experience of looking at great art without actually seeing it in person. Despite having written about Giotto on numerous occasions in Stones of Venice and Modern Painters, he never treated the Arena Chapel in its own right. Here Ruskin examines the panels and brings them life, describing their many hidden details, all the result of Giotto''s unrivaled genius. As Ruskin says, "Giotto was...one of the greatest men who ever lived." Long out of print, the Arundel Society first published Giotto and His Works in Padua between 1853 and 1860. It stands as Ruskin''s most compelling set of reflections on Giotto''s masterpiece—an artwork that, in Ruskin''s estimation, changed the very course of art history...The result is a book that serves not only as an introduction for students of art history, but also as a discussion of what it means to be a great artist, by one of most influential writers ever to tackle visual art."-Print ed.

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John Ruskin (8 February 1819 - 20 January 1900) was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, as well as an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy. His writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. Ruskin also penned essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art was later superseded by a preference for plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, and architectural structures and ornamentation. He was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th century, and up to the First World War. After a period of relative decline, his reputation has steadily improved since the 1960s with the publication of numerous academic studies of his work. Today, his ideas and concerns are widely recognised as having anticipated interest in environmentalism, sustainability and craft. Ruskin first came to widespread attention with the first volume of Modern Painters (1843), an extended essay in defence of the work of J. M. W. Turner in which he argued that the principal role of the artist is "truth to nature". From the 1850s he championed the Pre-Raphaelites who were influenced by his ideas. His work increasingly focused on social and political issues. Unto This Last (1860, 1862) marked the shift in emphasis. In 1869, Ruskin became the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, where he established the Ruskin School of Drawing. In 1871, he began his monthly "letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain", published under the title Fors Clavigera (1871-1884). In the course of this complex and deeply personal work, he developed the principles underlying his ideal society. As a result, he founded the Guild of St George, an organisation that endures today.

Classic work by the great Victorian expresses his deepest convictions about the nature and role of architecture and its aesthetics. This authoritative edition includes reproductions of the 14 original plates of Ruskin''s superb drawings of architectural details from such structures as the Doge''s Palace in Venice to the Cathedral of Rouen.

A fairy tale which tells how through kindness a boy regains for himself the treasure his cruel older brothers lost.

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David Carrier''s commentary reveals the complexity that lies beyond the surfaces of these highly personal narratives, and demonstrates how the concerns of the aesthete relate closely to those of philosophy, psychoanalytic theory and sociology."--BOOK JACKET.

John Ruskin, the most influential Victorian art critic, was always fascinated by the melancholy beauty of Venice. During his fourth visit to the city in 1849 he began work on the first volume of what was to become his masterpiece: THE STONES OF VENICE.

Presented here for the first time is the full text of John Ruskin''s Christmas Story and his related letters of interpretation in which he describes what he believes to be a mystic experience placing him under the guidance of the soul of his lost love, Rose La Touche.