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

Sculpture of the door of St. Anastasia, on a larger scale. The stunted figures - see especially the Virgin & St. John, on each side, in the piece of the crucifixion are intensely characteristic of the Veronese school, while the softly flowing draperies - see the annunciation on the extreme left especially - are formed almost directly from the great Greek school of which I have said so much already. Compare directly here the treatment of the drapery of the central figure, the Madonna above the capital, and the lower edge of the upper robe of St. Dominic, in the centre of the shaft, with Mr. Macdonalds’ drawing in No. 57 . R. The sculptures above the two lateral pilasters are St. Anastasia, on the left, St. Catherine, on the right, holding her fleur-de-lys sceptre, as a princess, and her wheel, as a martyr. The extremely minute and almost discordant introduction of the niche above each of these figures is among the earliest occurrences of Gothic form in Verona. The pointed arches above are much later work. The conception of subject is throughout earnest and solemn in the highest degree, though restricted to the fewest possible figures. The Annunciation - in which both figures kneel, but the angel is made colossal to indicate superior power - and the adoration of the two angels opposite, at the Resurrection, are conceived in the grandest manner of Italian art; while in the bustling little group of sheep and richly foliaged thicket of the Vision to the Shep- Shepherds are anticipated the most elaborately decorative sculptures of the xv.th century. The bills pasted on the right-hand pilaster are the contribution of the xixth century to this work of art.