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

In connection with the series of Greek Plants, given in the last cabinet, I am now going to give examples of Greek feeling for Colour and Form of the most elementary kind. But I place this for the first of the series because it at once explains, beyond any possibility of mistake, the essential points of Greek work, as distinguished from Barbaric. Primarily, Natural Life, as opposed to monstrous or inhuman; secondly, Order, as opposed to Phantasy and to Licence; and, lastly, the consummate grace of Rest as opposed to the grace of Action. These points have often been dwelt upon in my Lectures; but I was never able completely to illustrate them by any single piece of Art, until I saw and drew this one. For the fact is that the Greeks did not arrive themselves at these three principles at the same time. They did not reach their perfect Naturalism till they had lost their love of Symmetry and order; and it is only in this inherited school of Greek work at Pisa in the xiith century that the entire unity of their qualities may be seen in balance. It will be felt at once how the quiet Humanity of this E. Head differs from everything Norman or German of the same period, how the exquisite order of its hair, of the folds of the beard, and of the leafage by which it is encompassed, separates itself from the confused intricacy of Arabic or other barbarous ornamentation, and, lasly, how the more or less undulating languid grace of its undulating curves expresses a temper, capable of Action in deed, but triumphing in Repose, while the elasticity and spring of Gothic foliage as distinctly indicates a temper incapable of Rest, unless fatigued. The introduction of the red and black Mosaic on the flat ground and the black beads in the eyes complete the piece of work as a general symbol of all that the Greeks meant to praise by their term ποικιλία.