What might Ruskin have thought of Venice today? He held strong views about the kind of destructive restorations he had witnessed in the mid-nineteenth century, and his meeting in Venice in 1877 with the young Count Alvise Piero Zorzi led to their close collaboration on Zorzi’s planned publication: a damning account of the works undertaken on the north and south façades of the Basilica of San Marco, and a forceful protest against the plans scheduled for the west front. Ruskin took part with enthusiasm, writing a long preface to Zorzi’s pamphlet, and undertaking to pay the publication costs.
Your head is coated by a thick soup of black and green paint. A roughly smeared handprint of grey-blue smoke tarnishes your jaw while sharp flecks of orange, pale yellow and white sting your cheeks and eyes. A wave of red threatens to permeate the scene as you look up, enraged, at the dandified artist […]