BOOKS: Stones of Venice

Venice has always attracted writers__Henry James, Byron, Mann, Proust, Balzac. It inspired lofty prose from Byron in particular, "I saw from out the wave her structures rise. As from the stroke of an enchanters wand. A thousand wings their cloudy wings expand around me...where Venice sate in state throned on her hundred isles." Most writers as well as painters, seduced by the city, swelled up into a romantic ardor of praise and adulation. But it was the particularly unromantic John Ruskin, the 19th century art critic, who wrote the most influential book about the city, "The Stones of Venice" a detailed three-volume work on Venetian art and architecture__ a sober critical appraisal of the cities Gothic and Byzantine styles. Though sober and critical words__ these are glorious words__fine writing written in a florid Victorian style. Ruskin was passionate about the city, and infused the work with a fine tuned passion and critical appreciation not touched upon by other authors. Most tourists to Venice in the 19th and early 20th centuries clutched this book as they traveled through the city's buildings and churches. It's a guidebook in a sense. Ruskin was also a social critic who believed that architecture could not be separated from morality, especially the Venetian Gothic, which he saw as the highest form of art. Other books of interest: "Death in Venice", by Thomas Mann, "Massimilla Doni," by Honore Balzac