ADDRESSES ON DECORATIVE COLOUR 491

was a glorious thing to be able to paint like that, and yet it was but a single pear; on the human face there were at least a million of shades of colours, and not less in the ripened pear, and there were half-a-dozen scarlet strawberries in every page of the missal; and yet the one was bad painting, while the other was all but perfection. These later missals were full of faults and incongruities, arising from the attempt to produce paintings when the writers should have limited themselves to ornaments. It would have been far better if they had confined themselves to what they could do well, instead of attempting great things to which they were unequal. He had been subjected to criticism because he had expressed an opinion more favourable to the works of the thirteenth century than those of a later period; but an examination of the works of the two periods would show that he was fully borne out by the facts. In his opinion no doubt could exist in the minds of any persons who had seen the architecture of Rheims, Amiens, and Notre Dame of Paris, and had compared them with the contemporary works of Lincoln and Wells Cathedrals, that during the thirteenth century architecture was in a much higher state in France than in England: indeed, the purest Gothic in the world was the French Gothic with the square abacus of that period.¹ What he had spoken of was the fall of art, as respected missal painting; and he had shown, from the causes which he had stated, that the art had from that period continued to decline. It had gone on falling, becoming worse and worse, until the time of Giulio Clovio² which was the worst of all. He did not mean to say that a painter should not illuminate a book or paint a wall, but it must be when he was at rest. But because a great painter might have painted a magnificent picture on the wall of a palace, we must not expect to have all our rooms painted by great artists, nor could we expect generally to have good paintings in our books. If we had, the attention would be carried away from the work of the author to the work of the artist, and he had no idea of having books that would not be read. What he wished was, to endeavour, by introducing appropriate decoration, to make books more attractive, and not to fill libraries with works so highly decorated that the owners were afraid to touch them. His object in introducing illuminations into books was not to lead the mind away from the text, but to enforce it.

18. Whilst upon this subject, he would notice some remarks which had appeared in last week’s Builder. It was said, in an article signed “Illuminator,” that he had shown illustrations of letters surrounded and mixed up with so many ornaments and forms as to render them illegible.³ He was

¹ [This sentence is expanded below, p. 493; compare with it Lectures on Architecture and Painting, above, p. 62 n.]

² [Giorgio Giulio Clovio (called Macedo), born in Croatia in 1498; died in Rome in 1578; the great miniaturist of his age. There are examples of his work in the Library of the British Museum.]

³ [The writer of this letter (Builder, November 18), said: “I was induced by the prospectus, issued from the Architectural Museum, to attend there on the 11th inst., for the purpose of hearing Mr. Ruskin lecture on ‘decorative colour, as applicable to architectural and other purposes.’ This is a very grand announcement for a very subordinate purpose, when we come to read the small printing, which says that ‘these lectures will be exclusively addressed to workmen who are in the habit of executing designs (more especially letterings) on walls and shop-fronts ...’ I found

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