86 ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING

till lately, been quite aware of the lengths to which I was prepared to carry the principle.¹

The arguments, or assertions, which they generally employ against this second proposition and its consequences, are the following:

First. That the true nobility of architecture consists, not in decoration (or sculpture), but in the “disposition of masses,” and that architecture is, in fact, the “art of proportion.”²

63. It is difficult to overstate the enormity of the ignorance which this popular statement implies. For the fact is, that all art, and all nature, depend on the “disposition of masses.” Painting, sculpture, music, and poetry depend all equally on the “proportion,” whether of colours, stones, notes, or words. Proportion is a principle, not of architecture, but of existence. It is by the laws of proportion that stars shine, that mountains stand, and rivers flow. Man can hardly perform any act of his life, can hardly utter two words of innocent speech, or move his hand in accordance with those words, without involving some reference, whether taught or instinctive, to the laws of proportion. And in the fine arts, it is impossible to move a single step, or to execute the smallest and simplest piece of work, without involving all those laws of proportion in their full complexity. To arrange (by invention) the folds of a piece of drapery, or dispose the locks of hair on the head of a statue, requires as much sense and knowledge of the laws of proportion, as to dispose the masses of a cathedral. The one are indeed smaller than the other, but the relations between 1, 2, 4, and 8, are precisely the same as the relations between 6, 12, 24, and 48. So that the assertion that “architecture

¹ [Thus in the pamphlet “by an Architect” already referred to (Vol. IX. p. xliii.), Ruskin was denounced as “obnoxious to the members of the architectural profession, one and all.” He had said so many things, “altogether the reverse of complimentary to the present race of architects, that the entire body cannot but regard him as a common enemy, and a ‘malevolent’ of the worst description.”]

² [This traditional definition or architecture had been accepted by the critic in the Edinburgh Advertiser, above referred to (p. xxxvi. n.), who defended the Greek style against Ruskin’s strictures on the ground of its accordance with “geometrical proportion.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]