Imagine a Kensington student set to copy a picture by Velasquez, and substituting a Nottingham lace pattern, traced with absolute exactness, for the painter’s sparkle and flow and flame, and boasting of his improvements as “plus exacte”! That is precisely what the Italian restorer does for his original; but, alas! he has the inestimable privilege also of destroying the original as he works, and putting his student’s caricature in its place! Nor are any words bitter or contemptuous enough to describe the bestial stupidities which have thus already replaced the floor of the church, in my early days the loveliest in Italy, and the most sacred.
In the Photograph No. 7 there is, and there only, one piece of real dilapidation—the nodding pinnacle propped on the right. Those pinnacles stand over the roof gutters, and their bracket supports are, of course, liable to displacement, if the gutters get choked by frost or otherwise neglected. The pinnacle is not ten feet high, and can be replaced and secured as easily as the cowl on a chimney-pot. The timbers underneath were left there merely to give the wished-for appearance of repairs going on. They defaced the church front through the whole winter of 1876. I copied the bills stuck on them one Sunday, and they are printed in the 78th number of Fors Clavigera, the first being the announcement of the Reunited agencies for information on all matters of commercial enterprise and speculation, and the last the announcement of the loss of a cinnamon-colored little bitch, with rather long ears (coll’ orecchie piùtosto lunghe). I waited through the winter to see how much the Venetians really cared for the look of their church; but lodged a formal remonstrance in March with one of the more reasonable civic authorities, who presently had them removed. The remonstrance ought, of course, to have come from the clergy; but they contented themselves with cutting flower-wreaths on paper to hang over the central door at Christmas-time. For the rest, the pretence of rottenness in the walls is really too gross to be answered. There are brick buildings in Italy by tens of thousands, Roman, Lombardic, Gothic, on all scales and in all exposures. Which of them has rotted or fallen, but by violence? Shall the tower of Garisenda stand, and the Campanile of Verona, and the tower of St. Mark’s, and, forsooth, this little fifty feet of unweighted wall be rotten and dangerous?
Much more I could say, and show; but the certainty of the ruin of poor Bedlamite Venice is in her own evil will, and not to be averted by any human help or pleading. Her Sabba delle streghe has truly come; and in her own words (see Fors, letter 77th): “Finalmente la Piazza di S. Marco sarà invasa e completamente illuminata dalle Fiamme di Belzebù. Perchè il Sabba possa riuscire più completo, si raccomanda a tutti gli spettatori di fischiare durante le fiamme come anime dannate.”
Meantime, in what Saturday pause may be before this Witches’ Sabbath, if I have, indeed, any English friends, let them now help me, and my fellow-workers, to get such casts, and colorings, and measurings, as may be of use in time to come. I am not used to the begging tone, and will not say more than that what is given me will go in mere daily bread to the workers, and that next year, if I live, there shall be some exposition of what we have got done, with the best account I can render of its parts and pieces. Fragmentary enough they must be,—poor fallen plumes of the winged lion’s wings,—yet I think I can plume a true shaft or two with them yet.
Some copies of the second edition of this circular had printed at the top of its last and otherwise blank page the words, “Present State of Subscription Lists:—,” a printer’s error, mistaken by some readers for a piece of dry humor.
Subscriptions were collected by Mr. G. Allen, as above intimated, and also by Mr. F. W. Pullen, secretary to the Ruskin Society of Manchester, under the authority of the following letter, which was printed and distributed by him: “November 29, 1879.—Dear Mr. Pullen: I am very glad to have your most satisfactory letter, and as gladly give you authority to receive subscriptions for drawings and sculptures of St. Mark’s. Mr. Bunney’s large painting of the whole west façade, ordered by me a year and a half ago, and in steady progress ever since, is to be completed this spring. It was a £500 commission for the Guild, but I don’t want to have to pay it with Guild capital. I have the power of getting casts, also, in places where nobody else can, and have now energy enough to give directions, but can no more pay for them out of my own pocket. Ever gratefully yours, J. R. As a formal authority, this had better have my full signature—John Ruskin.” In a further letter to Manchester on the subject, Mr. Ruskin wrote as follows: “It is wholly impossible for me at present to take any part in the defence—at last, though far too late—undertaken by the true artists and scholars of England—of the most precious Christian building in Europe; ... nor is there any occasion that I should, if only those who care for me will refer to what I have already written, and will accept from me the full ratification of all that was said by the various speakers, all without exception men of the most accurate judgment and true feeling, at the meeting held in Oxford. All that I think it necessary for you to lay, directly from myself, before the meeting you are about to hold, is the explicit statement of two facts of which I am more distinctly cognizant from my long residences in Italy at different periods, and in Venice during these last years, than any other person can be—namely, the Infidel—(malignantly and scornfully Infidel and anti-religionist) aim of Italian ‘restoration’—and the totality of the destruction it involves, of whatever it touches.” So again, in a second and despairing letter, he wrote: “You cannot be too strongly assured of the total destruction involved, in the restoration of St. Mark’s.... Then the plague of it all is, What can you do? Nothing would be effectual, but the appointment of a Procurator of St. Mark’s, with an enormous salary, dependent on the Church’s being let alone. What you can do by a meeting at Manchester, I have no notion. The only really practical thing that I can think of would be sending me lots of money to spend in getting all the drawings I can of the old thing before it goes. I don’t believe we can save it by any protests.” See the Birmingham Daily Mail, Nov. 27, 1879. The reader is also referred to “Fors Clavigera,” New Series, Letter the Fourth, pp. 125-6.
The meeting in Oxford alluded to above was held in the Sheldonian Theatre on November 15, 1879. Amongst the principal speakers were the Dean of Christ Church (in the chair), Dr. Acland, the Professor of Fine Art (Mr. W. B. Richmond), Mr. Street, Mr. William Morris, and Mr. Burne Jones.