Ruskin and The Stones of Venice

A multitude of pillars and white domes, clustered into a long low pyramid of eoloured light a treasure-heap, it seems, partly of gold, and partly of opal and mother-of-pearl, hollowed beneath into five great vaulted porehes, ceiled with fair mosaic, and beset with sculpture of alabaster, elear as amber and delicate as ivory —seulpture fantastic and 

These words and drawings reflect the magnificence that resonates in the actual architecture, authenticating the lamp of beauty, for Ruskin clearly believes that architecture should reflect the design found in nature and point towards the ultimate Master Builder. 

With a philosophy based on aesthetics, place, and history, Ruskin appeals to a moral architecture, encouraging builders to reject the techniques discovered in the Renaissance and developed in the Industrial Revolution and to embrace a time when the best buildings were constructed—the medieval Gothic cathedrals of England and Venice. In his later book, The Stones of Venice (1851-1853), Ruskin describes the elements of the Gothic that became foundational for the kind of architecture he proposes, and he provides many examples to illustrate. He points out the three virtues of a building (1) That it act well, (2) That it speak well, and (3) That it look well (Ruskin, 1885, vol. 1, ch. 2, sec. 1). 

In The Crown of Wild Olive, Ruskin explains the purpose of his writing  

The book I called The Seven Lamps was to show that certain right states of temper and moral feeling were the magic powers by which all good architecture, without exception, had been produced. The Stones of Venice had, from beginning to end, no other aim than to show that the Gothic architecture of Venice had arisen out of, and indicated in all its features, a state of pure national faith, and of domestic virtue and that its Renaissance architectme had arisen out of, and in all its features indicated, a state of concealed national infidelity, and of domestic corruption. (Ruskin, 1866, p. 53) 

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