In Venice, for the first time in Italy, an exhibition on John Ruskin

This is a brand new exhibition scheduled at the Doge’s Palace in Venice from March 10 to June 10, 2018: in fact, for the first time in Italy we are witnessing an exhibition on John Ruskin (London 1819 - Coniston, Lancashire, 1900). The exhibition John Ruskin. The Stones of Venice aims, in particular, to investigate the artist Ruskin and his relationship with the city of Venice. Thus, the Doge’s Palace hosts watercolors, notebooks, architectural reliefs, plaster casts, albumens and platinotypes that testify to this connection. In addition, the set designed by Pier Luigi Pizzi intends to evoke the Venice that Ruskin loved most: the Gothic and Byzantine, medieval and anticlassical. The English artist and critic was one of the leading figures in 19th-century European culture and had a strong connection with the lagoon city, to which he dedicated his literary work The Stones of Venice (“The stones of Venice”): it is a study of the city’s architecture, analyzed in its details, which is also a guide “for the few travelers who still cherish its monuments” (Ruskin had in fact witnessed the demolition of parts of St. Mark’s Basilica), as well as a hymn to the beauty, uniqueness and fragility of Venice.

Venice, Ruskin wrote in his work, “still lies before our eyes as it was in the final period of decadence: a phantom on the sands of the sea, so weak, so silent, so bare of everything but its beauty, that sometimes when we admire the languid reflection in the lagoon, we wonder almost as if it were a mirage which city, which shadow. I would like to try to trace the lines of this image before it is lost forever, and to gather, as far as I can, the warning that comes from each of the waves that beat inexorably, similar to the tolling of the death bell, against the stones of Venice.” Indeed, Ruskin was also a cantor of the decadence of Venice, where he stayed on several occasions (in no less than eleven trips) between 1835 and 1888. What binds him to the lagoon city is thus a strong, heartfelt relationship that is substantiated in the many paintings dedicated to Venice: views at all times of day, studies of clouds, studies of the city’s architecture, views of the lagoon, but also studies of the great Venetian painters such as Carpaccio, Veronese, and Tintoretto. Also on display will be the so-called “Venetian Notebooks”: notebooks, plans and notes made during sojourns. Also, manuscripts for “The Stones of Venice,” some printed editions, photographs, and paintings by the great artists of the 16th century compared with Ruskin’s studies.

However, the exhibition, curated by Anna Ottani Cavina, also goes beyond the relationship between Ruskin and Venice: although it cannot draw a complete profile of such a complex figure as Ruskin and his versatility, through the exhibition of one hundred works (with major international loans) it intends to communicate one of his particular talents: the one that led him to translate reality into images, as an important painter that he was, with particular regard to the works he created during his stay in Venice. “Ruskin’s colorful gaze,” says the curator, “will be a revelation for the Italian public, since he is the greatest watercolorist of the Victorian age.”

There will also be room to analyze Ruskin’s relationships with other artists, beginning with William Turner, to whom, according to the English critic, “nature gave a peculiar eye and a wildly beautiful imagination.” Turner, like Ruskin, stayed in Venice, and the exhibition also features his works depicting the city, such as Venice, Punta della Dogana and Santa Maria della Salute coming from the National Gallery in Washington and Venice, ceremony of the Marriage of the Sea from the Tate in London. The exhibition also aims to highlight the differences between the two: if Turner aimed for the sublime with an almost abstract painting of color and light, Ruskin instead proposed an analytical and descriptive art, although, we read in the presentation, “in the study of the natural datum or in the obsessive rendering of architectural details there is absolute visionariness, convinced - precisely by the paintings of ”his“ Turner - that the true artist is a seer, a prophet or, even, a ”scribe of God,“ that is, capable of grasping and representing the divine truth contained in natural reality.”

The exhibition is also enriched by a conference(John Ruskin and Venice, scheduled for Thursday, March 22, 2018 at 3 p.m. at the Museo Correr’s Ballroom) and is staged in the Doge’s Apartment of the Doge’s Palace. Opening hours: daily from 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m., ticket office closes one hour before. Tickets: full 13 euros, reduced 10 (for groups of at least 15 people, children and teens aged 6 to 14, students aged 15 to 25, over 65, MiBACT personnel, Icom Members, Trenitalia customers traveling on Freccia trains to Venice or international travelers with tickets to Italy, FS group employees, TCI members, MuseumPass holders, VeneziaUnica Pack Adult and Junior, ISIC International Student Identity Card, Carta Servizi Cinema more, Carta Rolling Venice, Carta Giovani, Carta Freccia), special concessions for MUVE Friend Card holders 7 euros, special concessions for Musei di Piazza San Marco, Itinerari Segreti di Palazzo Ducale or Tesori Nascosti del Doge ticket holders 2 euros, reduced schools 5 euros, free for children under 5, disabled and accompanying persons, guides from the province of Venice, tourist interpreters from the province of Venice accompanying groups, two teachers per school group, one accompanying person per adult group, MUVE partners, The Cultivist Card holders (with three accompanying persons). For more information you can visit the Doge’s Palace website.

In Venice, for the first time in Italy, an exhibition on John Ruskin

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