I read Art History at the University of Warwick, and in our third year, we had a compulsory (!) semester in Venice. Every seminar was held in front of the painting, sculpture or building we were studying; it was a dizzyingly wonderful time. The Stones of Venice was on our reading list for the semester, but I was put off both by the length and the density of the prose. In our first week, as our tutors inducted us into how our academic weeks would work, and how best to get to know the city, they implored us ‘Read Ruskin!’. 'Why?' we said. 'Because it will teach you how to see.’ And so it came to pass; I remember us reading while we stood in St Mark’s Square, looking at the buildings he marvelled at, and with his guidance, beginning to see. And I fell in love with Carpaccio’s St George and opposite him, St Augustine and his little dog mesmerised by the voice of St Jerome that they hear at the window.
Soon after returning to the UK, I found myself at evensong in Ruskin’s beloved Lincoln Cathedral, where I was spending 3 days on a course being taught the absolute basics of letter carving in stone. As I sat in the choir stalls, listening to the soaring music, my eye traveled upwards and I remember the physical thrill as I sensed the thousands of hours of craft and skill and hard work that had gone into every detail of stone and wood work, whether visible to worshippers or not. I felt then that I had started to see, and think, the way Ruskin wanted me to see.
Last modified 7 April 2024