The photograph shows all save the right-hand bay of the upper storey of the Loggia del Consiglio in Verona, built in 1493 and attributed to Fra Giocondo, and usually referred to by Ruskin as the 'Senate House'. A relief of the Annunciation, in two parts, flanks the central pilaster, and the window pediments contain reliefs of winged mermaids and gryphons. Statues of saints stand on the roof-line. The inlaid marble panels which flank the windows are clearly pockmarked with bullet-holes, which were removed in 1873. The overall arrangement of the building is clearly visible in Rudimentary Series no. 102, a photograph of the entire building. Ruskin also included a drawing of the right-hand bay-and-a-half by Bunney in the Working Series (see his entry for no. 102 in the manuscript revision of the Rudimentary Series).
The photograph must have been taken before Ruskin listed the drawing in the first catalogue devoted solely to the Educational Series in 1871, where it appeared as no. 46 in Case IV, "Illustrations of Italian Gothic, with its resultant Art", alongside other Italian works of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It remained in the same position, albeit renumbered as no. 96, in the 1874 catalogue of the series; but it is not mentioned in Ruskin's 1878 reorganisation.
Ruskin considered the building one of the noblest examples of early Renaissance architecture, which looked back to Byzantine models. In a note added to volume III of "The Stones of Venice" in 1881, he described how 'the noblest example of it, Fra Giocondo's exquisite loggia, has been daubed and damned by the modern restorer, into a caricature worse than a Christmas clown's. The exquisite colour of the Renaissance fresco, pure as rose-leaves and dark laurel - the modern Italian decorator thinks "sporco [dirty]," and replaces by buff-colour oil-cloth and Prussian green - spluttering his gold about wherever the devil prompts him, to enrich the whole.' (Stones of Venice, vol. III, ch. i, § 23 n.=XI.20 n.). Similarly, a footnote added to "Ariadne Florentina", he described how 'The admirable drawings of Venice, by my good assistant, Mr. Bunney, resident there, will become of more value to their purchasers every year, as the buildings from which they are made are destroyed. I was but just in time, working with him at Verona, to catch record of Fra Giocondo's work in the smaller square; the most beautiful Renaissance design in North Italy.' (Ariadne Florentina, § 245 = XXII.476.)
Presented by John Ruskin to the Ruskin Drawing School (University of Oxford), 1875; transferred from the Ruskin Drawing School to the Ashmolean Museum, c.1949.
Ruskin, John, Catalogue of the Educational Series (London: Smith, Elder, 1871), cat. Educational no. 46
Ruskin, John, Catalogue of the Educational Series (London: Spottiswoode, 1874), cat. Educational no. 96
Ruskin, John, ‘The Ruskin Art Collection at Oxford: Catalogues, Notes and Instructions’, Edward T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, eds, The Works of John Ruskin: Library Edition, 39 (London: George Allen, 1903-1912), 21, cat. Educational no. 96