Ashmolean The Elements of Drawing, John Ruskin’s teaching collection at Oxford

The print depicts an opening from an illuminated manuscript. On the left-hand folio is one of the evangelists, surrounded by panels of interlace decoration and, in the four corners, the symbols of the four evangelists: clockwise from the top right, the angel, eagle, lion and ox. On the right-hand folio is a highly decorated text page, carrying the text of Matthew I.18: XPI [i.e. 'Christi'] | AUTEMGE|NERATIO | sic erat

The manuscript is no. 51 in the monastery of Saint Gall, an Irish evangelary of the eighth or ninth century. It is plate 26 in J.O. Westwood, "Fac-similes of the Miniatures & Ornaments of Anglo-Saxon and Irish Manuscripts", London (Bernard Quaritch): 1868. It was removed from Ruskin's copy of the work, now in the collection of the Ruskin Foundation at the Ruskin Library, Lancaster. This may be the copy mentioned in Fors Clavigera (lett. 63, § 23 = XXVIII.559), bought from 'Professor Westwood' for £50, 'For copies of the Book of Kells, bought of a poor artist. Very beautiful, and good for gifts to St. George.'

The drawing was first recorded in the collection only in 1906, when Cook and Wedderburn listed it in frame 195 of the Reference Series, where it accompanied two more plates from the same work, depicting leaves from the Book of Kells, and a series of lithographs of letters from manuscripts in Monte Cassino.