I. PRIDE OF SCIENCE II. ROMAN RENAISSANCE 71

left to bear his name.¹ But, with respect to all who followed, there can be no question that the science they possessed was utterly harmful; serving merely to draw away the hearts at once from the purposes of art and the power of nature, and to make, out of the canvas and marble, nothing more than materials for the exhibition of petty dexterity and useless knowledge.²

§ 34. It is sometimes amusing to watch the naïve and childish way in which this vanity is shown. For instance, when perspective was first invented, the world thought it a mighty discovery, and the greatest men it had in it were as proud of knowing that retiring lines converge, as if all the wisdom of Solomon had been compressed into a vanishing point.³ And, accordingly, it became nearly impossible for any once to paint a Nativity, but he must turn the stable and manager into a Corinthian arcade, in order to show his knowledge of perspective; and half the best architecture of the time, instead of being adorned with historical sculpture, as of old, was set forth with bas-relief of minor corridors and galleries, thrown into perspective.

Now that perspective can be taught to any school boy in a week,⁴ we can smile at this vanity. But the fact is, that all pride in knowledge is precisely as ridiculous, whatever its kind, or whatever its degree. There is, indeed, nothing of which man has any right to be proud; but the very last

¹ [Compare a similar remark, on Leonardo’s dissipation of his energies, in Queen of the Air, § 157, and Stones of Venice, vol. ii. (Vol. X. p. 203.]

² [In his copy for revision Ruskin has written at the side of § 33 “Excellent and exhaustive.”]

³ [Vasari’s anecdotes of Paolo Uccello (1397-1475) may be instanced: “He employed himself perpetually, and without any intermission whatever, in the consideration of the most difficult questions connected with art, insomuch that he brought the method of preparing the plans and elevation of buildings, by the study of linear perspective, to perfection. ... And the sculptor Donatello (who was his intimate friend) would say to him, ‘Ah, Paolo, with this perspective of thine, thou art leaving the substance for the shadow.’... And his wife was wont to relate that Paolo would stand the whole night through beside his writing-table, seeking new terms for the expression of his rules in perspective; and when entreated by herself to take rest and sleep, he would reply, ‘Oh, what a delightful thing is this perspective’” (Bohn’s edition, 1855, vol. i. pp. 349, 350, 360).]

⁴ [See Ruskin’s own Elements of Perspective Arranged for the Use of Schools (1859)-a treatise of which he said in the preface that any schoolboy might read it through “in a few days, after he has mastered the first three and the sixth books of Euclid.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]