John Ruskin, a Victorian-era English writer known for his connections between nature, art, and society, released a treatise on Venetian art and architecture in three volumes from 1851 to 1853, entitled Stones of Venice. Using passages from Volume II of Ruskin’s Stones of Venice (1853), John Pfordresher examined how Ruskin not only describes the environmental site for the first Romanesque Venetian church, but how he discerns in its characteristics the values and religious beliefs which initiated that city’s later cultural and political success. Michael Scott, director of the Future of the Humanities Project, provided opening and closing remarks, and Michael Collins moderated a Q&A session following the presentation.
This event was sponsored by the Future of the Humanities Project; the Georgetown Humanities Initiative; the Georgetown Master’s Program in the Engaged and Public Humanities; Campion Hall, Oxford; and the Las Casas Institute (Blackfriars Hall, Oxford). It is part of the one-year-long series: A Bent but Beautiful World: Literature, Art, and the Environment.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user Wellcome Images
