Anglo-Saxon interference
Martin Gayford on how Ruskin helped stop the restoration of St Mark's in Venice 0 f the many literary talents of John Ruskin, the centenary of whose death is celebrated this year, one of the most strik- ing was for sheer, sweeping invective. Take, as an almost random example from his col- lected works, this from a pamphlet written in 1876 to protest against the building of a railway between Windermere and Keswick. Just by way of clearing the ground, Ruskin begins by sketching in a suitably apocalyp- tic background:
When the frenzy of avarice is daily drowning our sailors, suffocating our miners, poisoning our children, and blasting the cultivable sur-
Self-Portrait', 1875, attributed to John Ruskin, can be seen at the Tate Gallery's exhibition Ruskin, Turner and The Pre-Raphaelites face of England into a treeless waste of ashes, — what does it really matter whether a flock of sheep, more or less, be driven from the slopes of Helvellyn, or the little pool of Thirlmere filled with shale, or a few wild blossoms of St John's vale lost to the coronal of English spring? Little, to anyone; and let me say this at the outset of all saying nothing, to me.
All Ruskin's own 'dear mountain- grounds and treasure cities' he goes on, naming Interlaken, Geneva, Lucerne and Venice, were long ago destroyed 'by the European populace'. He is past caring, it is simply as a matter of duty that he sets about demolishing the contentions of those proposing the railway. (For example, to the argument that: There are mineral trea- sures in the district capable of develop- ment', he responded, 'Answer, — It is a wicked lie, got up by whosoever has got it up, simply to cheat shareholders.') Well, you might think, he was more elo- quent than Swampy, but probably not as effective. In fact, for all his pose of prophetic isolation, he was neither alone, nor ignored. Ruskin's defence of natural beauty and works of art against the damage caused by industrialisation, mass tourism and heavy-handed restoration strikes an up-to- date note. But he succeeded in winning over large numbers of his contemporaries.
Furthermore, despite the claim that Venice and the Alps had been destroyed by the dark forces of modernity, he did not always act as if he believed that the damage had already been done. His was such a forceful and influential voice that the fol- lowing year he and his followers and allies were able to halt a restoration of St Mark's in Venice so drastic that it would have amounted to a complete destruction of the mediaeval building. It is a heartening example of the power of art critical vituper- ation to change the world.
The situation was this. For the previous 20 years the architect principally responsi- ble for the fabric, G.B. Meduna, had been steadily rebuilding the north and south façades of the church. What he was doing was not unusual by international standards (something very similar happened to many mediaeval buildings in Britain, France and Spain). But this was being applied to the structure to which Ruskin had devoted more thought and eloquence than any other. And it was systematically expunging the very aspects of St Mark's which, in Ruskin's view, made it 'a confusion of delight'.
In The Seven Lamps of Architecture he had written that the west front of St Mark's was 'in its proportions as lovely a dream as ever filled human imagination'. But by that he didn't mean the mathematical precision of the proportions. He meant their splen- did wonkiness, the way the heights and thicknesses of the pillars, mostly looted from Byzantium, and the curvature of the arches differed. It is the organic irregularity of the structure which makes it beautiful to Ruskin.
'Similarly, it is not the uniformity of the marbles that made Ruskin describe St Mark's as resembling 'peacocks' feathers in the sun'. It was its diversity, the result of piecing together all manner of Byzantine columns and architectural bits and bobs, so one column would be porphyry, another verde antico, another veined with blue, the marble facing of the walls like watered silk.
All of this was being destroyed by Meduna, who, like many restorers, had a destructive mania for neatness. In the words of one of his successors — quoted by John Unrau in his admirable book Ruskin and St Mark's — on the north and south façades, 'Everything was straightened out. The columns and capitals were scraped, the old decorations were made anew, and the old marble slabs were replaced by new ones of a different kind.' In other words, as Ruskin wrote, if the restoration continued, the result would not be the old church at all, but a neatened-up, mechanical, full- scale model of it. 'Is this, to the people of the lagoon, no loss? To us foreigners it is total loss. We can build models of St Mark's for ourselves, in England or America.'
But resistance was at hand. In January 1877, Ruskin was approached by a Vene- tian disciple, Count A.P. Zorzi, who with his head full of The Seven Lamps had written an analytic attack on Meduna's restoration. Ruskin was delighted. It was `the best thing I ever saw written on archi- tecture but by myself, and, after suffering a `horrid' architectural dream 'about restora- tion of a Gothic pinnacle and bracket', he penned an equally ferocious introduction. This pamphlet exploded like a bomb on St Mark's day, 25 April. 'Immense fuss and laudation of our book,' wrote Ruskin in May. Italian opinion was swayed; the restoration was halted pending a report. But restorations tend to have tremendous institutional inertia — to stop them gener- ally means admitting that mistakes have been made in the past, bitter wormwood for those responsible (that is one reason why it so difficult to stop the over-cleaning of pictures today).
In 1879 it looked as though the restora- tion of the west front would go ahead after all. Once again, the Ruskinians weighed in, this time led by William Morris and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. There was a stream of articles in the British press, mainly con, occasionally pro the restoration.
Back in Venice, there was resentment of this Anglo-Saxon interference. One of the guardians of St Mark's demanded that those responsible for the work 'should not be sacrificed to the indignations of John Bull', and that instead the Italian ambas- sador should demand a cessation of 'meet- ings, agitations and manifestoes' on the subject. All this is reminiscent of the response, a couple of years ago, when an American professor had the temerity to complain about restorations at the Uffizi. Meanwhile, Meduna showed a compliant journalist around — another popular ploy of restorers to this day — who reported in the Times that the restoration was of impeccable sensitivity.
In the end, however, the forces of Ruskin prevailed. The restoration of the west front did not go ahead. To an extent, the damage done to the north and south façades was reversed. It remains true that, as Otto Demus, the leading authority on St Mark's wrote in 1960, 'In the 19th century . . . the cold touch of the restorer's hand destroyed much of the charm of one of the most pic- turesque monuments of Europe.' But if the outside of St Mark's still retains some of that charm, it is partly due to Ruskin and his followers. It is an encouraging story for those who today attempt to stop destruc- tive restoration armed only with the weapon of invective.
The Tate Gallery's exhibition Ruskin, Turn- er and The Pre-Raphaelites runs from 9 March to 28 May and will be reviewed at a later date.
Previous page
