DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61217#0280
268
JOHN RUSKIN.
years later — there is a little change, “ not towards
decline, but a not quite necessary precision.”
“ Who built it, shall we ask ? God and Man,—is the
first and most true answer. The stars in their courses
built it, and the Nations. Greek Athena labours here
—and Roman Father Jove, and Guardian Mars. The
Gaul labours here, and the Frank; knightly Norman,
—mighty Ostrogoth,—and wasted anchorite of Idumea.”
In this place shall be extracted a page that the
traveller should take with him to Lucca—the description
of that tomb of Ilaria del Caretto, the work of Jacopo
della Quercia, which, seen by Ruskin in his youth and
often seen again, shared with a height of the Alps, a
valley of the Jura, an allegory of Giotto, a myth of
Pallas, the rule over Ruskin’s life. The passage is in
The Three Colours of Pre-Raphaelitism:—
“ This sculpture is central in every respect; being
the last Florentine work in which the proper form of
Etruscan tomb is preserved, and the first in which all
right Christian sentiment respecting death is embodied.
. . . This, as a central work, has all the peace of the
Christian Eternity, but only in part its gladness. Young
children wreath round the tomb a garland of abundant
flowers, but she herself, Ilaria, yet sleeps; the time is
not yet come for her to be awakened out of sleep. Her
image is a simple portrait of her — how much less
beautiful than she was in life,we cannot know—but as
beautiful as marble can be. And through and in the
marble we may see that the damsel is not dead, but
sleepeth : yet as visibly a sleep that shall know no ending
until the last day break, and the last shadow flee away;
until then, she'shall not return? Her hands are laid on
JOHN RUSKIN.
years later — there is a little change, “ not towards
decline, but a not quite necessary precision.”
“ Who built it, shall we ask ? God and Man,—is the
first and most true answer. The stars in their courses
built it, and the Nations. Greek Athena labours here
—and Roman Father Jove, and Guardian Mars. The
Gaul labours here, and the Frank; knightly Norman,
—mighty Ostrogoth,—and wasted anchorite of Idumea.”
In this place shall be extracted a page that the
traveller should take with him to Lucca—the description
of that tomb of Ilaria del Caretto, the work of Jacopo
della Quercia, which, seen by Ruskin in his youth and
often seen again, shared with a height of the Alps, a
valley of the Jura, an allegory of Giotto, a myth of
Pallas, the rule over Ruskin’s life. The passage is in
The Three Colours of Pre-Raphaelitism:—
“ This sculpture is central in every respect; being
the last Florentine work in which the proper form of
Etruscan tomb is preserved, and the first in which all
right Christian sentiment respecting death is embodied.
. . . This, as a central work, has all the peace of the
Christian Eternity, but only in part its gladness. Young
children wreath round the tomb a garland of abundant
flowers, but she herself, Ilaria, yet sleeps; the time is
not yet come for her to be awakened out of sleep. Her
image is a simple portrait of her — how much less
beautiful than she was in life,we cannot know—but as
beautiful as marble can be. And through and in the
marble we may see that the damsel is not dead, but
sleepeth : yet as visibly a sleep that shall know no ending
until the last day break, and the last shadow flee away;
until then, she'shall not return? Her hands are laid on