xxx INTRODUCTION

Governors and Generals, but also the aged Marmont, Duke of Ragusa, one of Napoleon’s Marshals.

In one letter Ruskin gives an interesting description of a Venetian interior:-

“22nd Feb. [1852.]-I paid yesterday-one of what are now the rarest of my payments-a morning call. Mme. Esterhazy having invited me again and again to see her, I went yesterday with Effie for the first time; Marmont came in while we were sitting with her, and cross-examined me not unintelligently respecting the chief styles of the architecture I was examining at Venice. The Countess’ house is the prettiest thing I ever saw on a small scale, only wanting some Turner pictures to complete its perfection. It is a corner house, with side windows looking up and down the Grand Canal-every window having its balcony, be it long or short, roofed in, and hung with silk, and filled with flowers; not inconveniently, as-begging my mother’s pardon-that corner in our anteroom is sometimes filled, especially when I want to look at my Isola Madre drawing; but a pot here, and a pot there, not pots exactly, but nondescript vases of graceful forms, of glass, overrun with leaves. The one that struck me most was in the form of a large star or flower, and of coral-red colour, hung from the ceiling with a fresh green climbing plant straggling over it: it looked as if it were at once the support and the blossom. I found it was only of common smooth earth painted a delicate red, but its effect was exquisite. Then the inner rooms are an exact and most skilfully compounded harmony of French fancy and English comfort; the pretty silken and golden and enamelled luxury of Paris, with a grave tone of English quiet through it all-effected, I believe, first by everything being good and well finished, fit for use, and not over-crowded; secondly, by a good deal of dark colouring in the decorative painting-one room being painted with a deep bronze or mahogany colour, and the lights touched upon it in silver-white so skilfully as to delight me merely as a piece of artistical painting. The man who did it could have become a real painter if he had liked: the handling just like Etty’s...”

There were masked balls, too, and gala nights at the opera;¹ illuminations on the water to receive the present Emperor of Austria-whom Ruskin describes as “a well-made youth, with rather a thin, ugly, not unpleasant face” (Sept. 14, 1851)-and many private parties in honour of distinguished visitors to Venice, such as the Infanta of Spain, the

¹ For a notice of the theatre at Venice in these days, see Modern Painters, vol. iv. ch. xix. § 14.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]