Essay Questions

Compare and contrast the objectives of ‘Lombard and Arabic’ architecture. - “The Quarry”

Ruskin expounds, “The work of the Lombard was to give hardihood and system to the enervated body and enfeebled mind of Christendom; that of the Arab was to punish idolatry, and to proclaim the spirituality of worship. The Lombard covered every church which he built with the sculptured representations of bodily exercises—hunting and war. The Arab banished all imagination of creature form from his temples, and proclaimed from their minarets, “There is no god but God.” Opposite in their character and mission, alike in their magnificence of energy, they came from the North and from the South, the glacier torrent and the lava stream: they met and contended over the wreck of the Roman empire; and the very centre of the struggle, the point of pause of both, the dead water of the opposite eddies, charged with embayed fragments of the Roman wreck, is Venice.” Although their purposes are deviating, ‘ Lombard and Arab’ deconstruct the essence of the Venetian architecture by extinguishing the fundamentals that discriminated the Venetian architecture. Literally, they confronted the robust sockets of Venice’s architecture rendering Venice dull and bleak.

How does Ruskin underscore the significance of builders? - “The Virtues of Architecture”

Ruskin writes, “ Now there is in everything properly called art this concernment of the intellect, even in the province of the art which seems merely practical. For observe: in this bridge-building I suppose no reference to architectural principles; all that I suppose we want is to get safely over the river; the man who has taken us over is still a mere bridge-builder,—a builder, not an architect: he may be a rough, artless, feelingless man, incapable of doing any one truly fine thing all his days. I shall call upon you to despise him presently in a sort, but not as if he were a mere smoother of mortar; perhaps a great man, infinite in memory, indefatigable in labor, exhaustless in expedient, unsurpassable in quickness of thought. Take good heed you understand him before you despise him.” Ruskin stresses that builders without refined architectural familiarity should not gratuitously shunned because they could exploit their inventiveness in the erection of an extensive bridge connecting two sections. This amplification underwrites to Ruskin’s thesis of ‘ the virtues of architecture.’ Uncomplicatedness should not be underestimated when scrutinizing the materiality of architectural work.