At Works, 4.xxxiv and following Ruskin gives an account of his analysis in 1845 of aspects of religious painting, including those like Dolci whose work represents error and vice. At Works, 4.118 there is footnote in which Ruskin discusses his ignorance of the religious schools. He claims there that he was introduced to them by his reading of Lord Lindsay, and that the resulting work in the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence was associated with his reading of Dante. The chronology is unlikely since Lord Lindsay did not publish until 1846 and 1847.
There is a report of a lecture at the Working Men's College in 1860 in which Ruskin distinguishes between two different kinds of religious painting that which was 'far away from anything earthly' and that which is 'mixed up with the every-day life of men; and this was the religion of the great Venetians ( Works, 16.469)’.
Again in 1860 at Works, 7.302 the Italian religious schools 'gave themselves to the following of pleasure only and, as a religious school, after a few pale rays of fading sanctity from Guido [Reni], and brown gleams of gypsy Madonnahood from Murillo, came utterly to an end'.
In 1878, at Works, 34.170 there is another list of the 'principal masters of the religious school', those who obey the 'commandment of Eternal Charity'. This list includes, of the painters mentioned in Modern Painters I, Giotto, Fra Angelico, and Carpaccio. Botticelli, Luini, and Filippo Lippi, mentioned in 1878, do not appear at all in Modern Painters I