Ruskin 's early exposure to the Classics was problematic. Being home tutored in the classical languages and literature, he arrived at Christ Church, Oxford without having mastered the use of Greek accents unlike his fellow undergraduates, who had received such learning through the public schools. There, religion and the pagan past were embraced without generating such contradictions as they would for the evangelically-reared Ruskin.
At Oxford, classicism, aristocratic pride and lack of religious convictions (which Ruskin regarded as characteristic of the Renaissance) were part of his daily experience and some of his later attitudes towards classicism in art were already becoming evident. For instance, he would later recall the classically inspired designs by Sir Joshua Reynolds for stained glass in New College Chapel as containing 'Faiths, Charities or other well ordered and emblem fitted virtues' which he further remarked were 'even less lovely than his ordinary portraits of women'. ( Works, 19.7). In The Stones of Venice Ruskin pointed to the incongruity of classical mythology and Christianity: 'Mythologies ill understood at first then perverted into feeble sensualities take the place of the representations of Christian subjects which had become blasphemous under the treatment of men like the Caracci' ( Works, 9.45).
However, he always thought highly of the classical philosopher Plato bestowing praise even at the height of his protest against the Renaissance, regarding him as 'especially remarkable for the sense of the presence of the Deity in all things great or small, which always runs in a solemn undercurrent beneath his exquisite playfulness and irony' ( Works, 10.370).
His strictures against classical art and education did not prevent him from recording his belief, stated emphatically in St. Mark's Rest, that much of the vigour of a native Greek artistic tradition had survived and been embodied in Byzantine art and architecture. Ruskin's 'unconversion' in Turin led not only to a revision of ideas on art, but ultimately to a new enthusiasm for an important aspect of classical culture, its mythology and fresh insights into the work of Turner who had been inspired by it, as well as new perspectives on Italian masters such as Botticelli. That he was sensitive to positive and transcendent values in works from the classical past can be seen for example in the Preface (Second Edition) to Modern Painters where the 'mysterious and intense fire' of Aeschylus finds a parallel in the vacant and seemingly incomprehensible portions of some of Turner's paintings. As Ruskin increasingly became concerned with social rather than artistic issues in works such as The Queen of The Air and Fors Clavigera Greek mythology assumed greater importance for him as a key to understanding human nature. His complex views on classical education and culture is explored in Birch, Ruskin's Myths.)