sábado, 28 de abril de 2007

Mission in England - John Ruskin (1819-1900)


We have visited John Ruskin's house in Brantwood.

From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ruskin
(also source of image)

I quote:
"John Ruskin (February 8, 1819 – January 20, 1900) is best known for his work as an art critic and social critic, but is remembered as an author, poet and artist as well. Ruskin's essays on art and architecture were extremely influential in the Victorian and Edwardian eras.
......
"Much of his later life was spent at a house called Brantwood, on the shores of Coniston Water located in the Lake District of England.
......
"Ruskin's beliefs in the preservation of ancient buildings had a significant influence on later thinking about the distinction between the conservation and the restoration of old buildings. Ruskin was a strong proponent of the former, while his contemporary, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, advocated for the latter. In The Seven Lamps of Architecture, Ruskin writes :

"Neither by the public, nor by those who have the care of public monuments, is the true meaning of the word restoration understood. It means the most total destruction which a building can suffer: a destruction out of which no remnants can be gathered: a destruction accompanied with false description of the thing destroyed. Do not let us deceive ourselves in this important matter; it is impossible, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture."

This abhorrence for restoration is in marked contrast to Viollet-le-Duc who wrote that restoration is a "means to reestablish [a building] to a finished state, which may in fact never have actually existed at any given time."

Ruskin had a deep respect for Gothic architecture and old buildings in general. To him, the building's age was the most important aspect of its preservation: "For, indeed, the greatest glory of a building is not in its stones, not in its gold. Its glory is in its Age, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even of approval or condemnation, which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity.”

Sem comentários: