Research Projects

Building Ruskin’s Italy. Watching Architecture

Stephen Kite

This project will be completed by the publication of Building Ruskin’s Italy. Watching Architecture, by Ashgate in 2012. Based on extensive field-work, and research into John Ruskin's still little-interpreted archival material, notebooks and drawings (in the Ruskin Library, Lancaster University, UK and elsewhere)—and supported by grants from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, and the British Academy—the research summated in the book offers an unprecedented account of the evolution of Ruskin's architectural thinking and observation in the context of Italy where his watching of building achieved its greatest intensity. Venice naturally figures large in a work that also examines other key sites including Verona, Lucca, Pisa, Florence, Milan and Monza; here, the fabrics are vividly read in their contexts against the rich evidence of Ruskin's diaries, his pocket-book sketches, architectural worksheets, drawings, and daguerrotypes (the early form of photography), and the drafts and published editions of the texts. The study presents the complex story of Ruskin's visual thinking in architecture as a narrative of deepening interpretation and representation, focusing on the humbler monuments of Italy. It shows how Ruskin's early

picturesque naturalism was transformed by the realisation that to understand the built realities confronting him in Italy demanded a closer engagement with the substance of the stones themselves; reflecting Ruskin's sense of his task as a near-archaeological gleaning and gathering of remains 'hidden in many a grass grown court, and silent pathway, and lightless canal'.

Contents: Introduction; 'Picturesque down to its door knockers': a grand Italian tour; 'Constant watchfulness': beginning the study or architecture (1841–45); Watching Byzantium 1846-50; 'Watchful wandering' – evolving a Gothic taxonomy; Cities of bits – colour, ornament and spoils; Stones of Verona; Bibliography; Index.

Reviews: Stephen Kite's study gives us an unprecedented understanding of the development of Ruskin's observation of, and thinking about, Italian Gothic architecture in the period leading to the publication of The Stones of Venice. The book sheds substantial new light on Ruskin's thinking at a key period in his intellectual development. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the subject.
Mark Swenarton, University of Liverpool, UK

Link to Ashgate site