The Stones of Venice

The Stones of Venice is a treatise on architecture and culture by the English art critic John Ruskin (1819-1900), originally published in three volumes in 1851-1853. Although the main subject of The Stones of Venice is the northern Italian city’s architecture, Ruskin uses this topic to address a wider range of historical, aesthetic, and moral themes. In the first part of the book, he gives an outline of architecture for the lay reader, placing the craft against its historical and social background and explaining basic building principles and how they work.

In the second part of the book, Ruskin discusses the architecture of Venice, describing in detail such buildings as St. Mark’s Basilica and the Ducal Palace and placing them in their historical, artistic, social, and political contexts. Ruskin argues that Venice’s rise as a world power corresponded to the Christian values of the Byzantine and Gothic periods in the Middle Ages, and that its decline was caused in part by self-centeredness, hedonism, and a loss of faith that accompanied the Renaissance era. Ruskin presents this historical thesis with a view toward social and artistic improvement in his own era in England, which at the time was witnessing a revival of Gothic architecture and values advanced in part by Ruskin himself.