I. PRIDE OF SCIENCE II. ROMAN RENAISSANCE 47

characteristic of the Renaissance central school is its introduction of accurate knowledge into all its work, so far as it possesses such knowledge;¹ and its evident conviction that such science is necessary to the excellence of the work, and is the first thing to be expressed therein. So that all the forms introduced, even in its minor ornament, are studied with the utmost care; the anatomy of all animal structure is thoroughly understood and elaborately expressed, and the whole of the execution skilful and practised in the highest degree. Perspective, linear and aerial, perfect drawing and accurate light and shade in painting, and true anatomy in all representations of the human form, drawn or sculptured, are the first requirements in all the work of this school.

§ 7. Now, first considering all this in the most charitable light, as pursued from a real love of truth, and not from vanity, it would, of course, have been all excellent and admirable, had it been regarded as the aid of art, and not as its essence. But the grand mistake of the Renaissance schools lay in supposing that science and art were the same things, and that to advance in the one was necessarily to perfect the other. Whereas they are, in reality, things not only different, but so opposed that to advance in the one is, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, to retrograde in the other. This is the point to which I would at present especially bespeak the reader’s attention.

§ 8. Science and art are commonly distinguished by the nature of their actions; the one as knowing, the other as changing, producing, or creating. But there is a still more important distinction in the nature of the things they deal with.² Science deals exclusively with things as they are in

¹ [In his copy of this volume Ruskin has here noted at the side a reference to “passage on Knowledge in Jeremy Taylor, Holy Living, chapter on Humility”-viz. ch. ii. sec. iv.: “Our learning is then best, when it teaches most humility; but to be proud of learning is the greatest ignorance in the world. For our learning is so long in getting, and so very imperfect, that the greatest clerk knows not the thousandth part of what he is ignorant.”]

² [Compare the distinction drawn in Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. vi. § 44, between “the men of facts” and “the men of design.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]