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.

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Showing the essential conditions of ornament in Greek vase-painting of the earliest school. Its restriction between horizontal lines appears to me much connected with their active sea-life; and as the vase turned upon the wheel the tracing of these level lines by the steady pencil was, E. I think, associated more in the workman's mind with his pleasure in the sea-horizon or in the extent of some fruitful plain than with the plinths and the other mouldings which afterwards carried the same delight in horizontal lines into the ruling forms of his noblest Architecture. It is very interesting to find the same pleasure in the horizontal bar governing the otherwise totally dif ferent mural designs of the two great sea-nations of Italy - Pisans and Genoese: - Sea-nations I call them more than the Venetian because they left the Val d'Arno and the Apennines to dwell upon the waves in pure love of them while the Venetian was only driven to them in exile.

I place next the most beautiful instance I ever saw of the use of horizontal lines by the Pisans, and of the ποικιλία of the inlaid marbles in association with the Gothic forms which they had derived from the North. This palace, on the South side of the Arno is, I suppose, of the early xiv.th Century, and especially delightful to me in the proportions of its shafts and arches, and E. in the treatment of its Decoration; with full trust in the spectator's careful watchfulness of the slightest variations, venturing all claim upon his admiration on the disposition of four flower-like stars, four crafts-of-arms and two crosses at the top. The lower drawing is an enlargement of one of the windows as seen from below. It ought to have been semi-circular; but I cannot draw from nature otherwise than as she sits (or stands) to me, and this was the real look of the window from the point, steeply beneath it where I stood. To make it quite right the Verticals should have been in retiring Perspective; but this would have been too offensive, and the error must, therefore, be pardoned.

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Studies from the Coliseum and Temple of Janus at Rome , exhibiting, in the corruption of Greek Architecture, one more character in which our architects rarely believe the free-handed drawings of Curves. The mouldings in the Drawing on the right hand, round one of the arches of the Temple of Janus, are not thus distorted by my carelessness; they are so cut by E. the mason with the free chisel.

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An exquisite enlargement, by Mr Burgess, of the wreath of olive round the head of Jupiter on a copper coin of Syracuse. This is to be compared, first, with Example No.10 in order that the student may feel the manner in which the Greeks adapt natural vegetable form to ornamental purpose; and, secondly, that he may recognise the undulating languor of the Greek lines as opposed to the spring or rigidity of the natural one. In my drawing of the olive spray , however, this is not enough seen, because the study was made from dry leaves which had already lost part of their expression of strength.

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Although this exercise is of an elementary character I place it beside the last, because it shows more distinctly the strictness of limitation between within tapering lines which a Greek was always prepared to submit to joyfully, whether in the pediment of a Temple, or, as here, in the pointing of a garland towards the brow. It will be observed that there is more natural spring in this olive-branch than in that round the head of the Jupiter. It indeed belongs to a less conscious and more lovely state of Greek art.

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