Mentions in the index volume (39) of the Library Edition:
- Ruskin at Lisieux (1848), 8, xxix. and n., xxxi., 36, 90
- Cathedral
- choir traceries, 8, 88,
- dripstone, 9, 98,
- intersection of mouldings, 8, 93
- porch, 9, 322,
- restoration at, 8, 128, 243,
- South-West door, 8, 93, 125, 128 (Plate 7 fig. 1
- street architecture, 12, 36,
- Prout's drawing, 14, 414-16 (Plate 15),
- wooden architecture in stone style, 14, 414
[In the following passages I have put “Lisieux” in boldface type. — GPL]
The Seven Lamps of Architecture
Against restoration (from Chapter VI, “The Lamp of Sacrifice”:):
From Chapter I, “The Lamp of xxx”:
There can be none in the brute hardness of the new carving. Look at the animals which I have given in Plate 14, as an instance of living work, and suppose the markings of the scales and hair once worn away, or the wrinkles of the brows, and who shall ever restore them? The first step to restoration (I have seen it, and that again and again, seen it on the Baptistery of Pisa, seen it on the Casa d' Oro at Venice, seen it on the Cathedral of Lisieux), is to dash the old work to pieces; the second is usually to put up the cheapest and basest imitation which can escape detection, but in all cases, however careful, and however labored, an imitation still, a cold model of such parts as can be modelled, with conjectural supplements; and my experience has as yet furnished me with only one instance, that of the Palais de Justice at Rouen, in which even this, the utmost degree of fidelity which is possible, has been attained or even attempted.
§19. Do not let us talk then of restoration. The thing is a Lie from beginning to end. You may make a model of a building as you may of a corpse, and your model may have the shell of the old walls witliin it as your cast might have the skeleton, with what advantage I neither see nor care; but the old building is destroyed. [8.xxx — full text surounding this passage]]
Last modified 26 June 2010