EPILOGUE 239

distance, close to the head, seem injurious to the picture. Note, with respect to the value of them, the exceeding importance of the distant light in the Bellini of the Louvre.

And so on, for two or three pages more, concluding the study of the collections at Genoa, and, as it came to pass, also concluding my studies in this direction for ever. From Genoa I went on in that spring of 1845, to Lucca, where the tomb of Ilaria di Caretto at once altered the course of my life for me (see Fors Clavigera, Letter 45)¹ and from that day I left the upholsterer’s business in art to those who trade in it, and have guided my work, and limited my teaching, only by the sacred laws of truth and devotion which created the perfect schools of Christian art in Florence and Venice.

§ 6. The almost total cessation of reference, in my subsequent writings, to the merely artistic qualities of painting, has naturally enough made its practical students doubt my familiarity with them; and the occasionally dogmatic statement of the technical excellence of such and such pieces of work, which was indeed founded on an extent of technical study in all the galleries of Europe, except those of Vienna and Madrid,² absolutely impossible to painters who must work for their living, seemed to their narrower experience directed only by my humours. Whereas the only humour by which I have allowed myself to be unduly influenced has been that of carrying on my knowledge of the laws of nature and art to the utmost point which the years of active life would allow me to reach, without calculating how far my impaired strength and failing heart might in old age permit me to make the gained knowledge serviceable to others.

¹ [See also Epilogue to Modern Painters, vol. ii. (Vol. IV. p. 347, and ibid., p. 122).

² [And except, also, St. Petersburg. To the towns and galleries of North Italy Ruskin paid many visits. He was at Naples in 1840-1841; at Rome in 1840-1841, 1872, 1874; to Sicily he went in 1874. He visited the German galleries (Berlin, Dresden, and Munich) in 1859. He was at Cologne and Brussels in 1833, and at Antwerp in 1842; while he studied in the Louvre on nearly all his continental journeys between 1825 and 1888. His notes on the collection, written in 1844 and 1849, are given in Vol. XII.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]