DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61217#0103
‘THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE.’ 91
essential implications. Quite removed from these pro-
vocations to controversy, and easily detachable from the
ethical question so insistently discussed, is a passage
of characteristic beauty descriptive of the imaginative
illusion of the cupola of Parma, where Correggio has
made a space of some thirty feet diameter “ look like
a cloud-wrapt opening in the seventh heaven, crowded
with a rushing sea of angels.” Ruskin mitigated
his admiration of Correggio in after years. A little
later comes the page on tracery, on one salient passage
whereof I have already dwelt; and here is another ex-
quisite example of this incomparably sensitive perception.
The tracery of the later French Gothic window had
grown exceedingly delicate; severe and pure it was
still, nevertheless, and the material manifestly stiff.
Yet-
“ At the close of the period of pause, the first sign
of serious change was like a low breeze, passing through
the emaciated tracery, and making it tremble. It
began to undulate like the threads of a cobweb lifted by
the wind. It lost its essence as a structure of stone.
. . . The architect was pleased with this new fancy.
. . . In a little time the bars of tracery were caused to
appear to the eye as if they had been woven together
like a net.”
Of chief importance in the chapter dedicated to “The
Lamp of Power” is Ruskin’s teaching upon the value
and weight of shadows. He bids the young architect
learn the habit of thinking in shadow: “ Let him
design with the sense of heat and cold upon him;
essential implications. Quite removed from these pro-
vocations to controversy, and easily detachable from the
ethical question so insistently discussed, is a passage
of characteristic beauty descriptive of the imaginative
illusion of the cupola of Parma, where Correggio has
made a space of some thirty feet diameter “ look like
a cloud-wrapt opening in the seventh heaven, crowded
with a rushing sea of angels.” Ruskin mitigated
his admiration of Correggio in after years. A little
later comes the page on tracery, on one salient passage
whereof I have already dwelt; and here is another ex-
quisite example of this incomparably sensitive perception.
The tracery of the later French Gothic window had
grown exceedingly delicate; severe and pure it was
still, nevertheless, and the material manifestly stiff.
Yet-
“ At the close of the period of pause, the first sign
of serious change was like a low breeze, passing through
the emaciated tracery, and making it tremble. It
began to undulate like the threads of a cobweb lifted by
the wind. It lost its essence as a structure of stone.
. . . The architect was pleased with this new fancy.
. . . In a little time the bars of tracery were caused to
appear to the eye as if they had been woven together
like a net.”
Of chief importance in the chapter dedicated to “The
Lamp of Power” is Ruskin’s teaching upon the value
and weight of shadows. He bids the young architect
learn the habit of thinking in shadow: “ Let him
design with the sense of heat and cold upon him;