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

This represents only a portion of a picture now in the Academy of Venice. I wished to have a head of John the Baptist to begin our series, and John the Baptist is the favourite Saint of Cima. Every Italian Painter has a favourite saint, and it seems as if the Saint has made also a favourite of the Painter, and declined to be painted by any body else; so that for everything one must go to a particular Painter. Nobody but Luini can draw a St. Catherine, nobody but Angelico a St. Lawrence, and nobody but Cima a St. John.

Here, therefore, is the first of your Educational series chosen for you, not that you may try to copy, but that you may look at, when you would be put in right temper for work. It will seem to speak to you if you look long; and say again, and yet again, ¨Ιδε—ό αϊρων. It is by good Cima of Conegliano; his own Alps are in the distance, and he shall teach us how to paint their wild flowers, and how to think of them.