For Ruskin, some dates represented turning points in his personal and working life: 23rd September 1845 is one such date. In letters written from Venice to his father that autumn he writes of being overwhelmed by the power of Tintoretto, and of feeling called to safeguard his paintings together with the fate of the city itself. Ruskin's discovery of Tintoretto's work plays a central role in his aesthetics, and was to inspire some of his best writing. Through 'Modern Painters and The Stones of Venice', works that were to be deeply influential throughout mid 19th-century Europe, Ruskin contributed to the establishment of Tintoretto's international fame and his insights still inform our ways of looking at his painting. The collection of writings published here appears for the first time in a well-organised and easily consultable form, a form that Ruskin himself had planned for English visitors. It takes us to paintings in churches throughout the city, though it is the Church and Scuola di San Rocco which stand out as having been the focus of extended and concentrated attention on Ruskin?s part. Neglected by Ruskin scholars, his "Venetian Index", in particular, meticulously records the state of conservation of Tintoretto's canvases at a time of neglect and conflict, while surveying the artist's oeuvre as a whole and minutely examining individual paintings.0Quintessentially Ruskinian in its investigation of the language of sacred iconography and the origins of landscape painting, this guide to Tintoretto's painting generates interpretations which art historians will find stimulating, but will also prove illuminating for non-expert readers wishing to explore a great painter through the sensibility of the critic who first introduced him to the English.

Known as a writer on art, architecture, nature, landscape, economics and history, John Ruskin (1819-1900) also produced extraordinary drawings and watercolours that offer insight into the workings of his mind and are testimony to the scrupulous attention he gave to everything that interested him. In his drawings, Ruskin revealed a range of emotional responses, from euphoric delight in pattern, colour and texture to utter despondency at what he came to perceive as the ultimate corruption of all things. Accompanying a landmark exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, and National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, in 2014, this book explores a private but hugely revealing aspect of Ruskin's creative life. -- from back cover.

The Venetian painter Jacopo Tintoretto (1518 94) is an ambiguous figure in the history of art. Critics and writers such as Vasari, Ruskin and Sartre all placed him in opposition to the established artistic practice of his time, noting that he had abandoned the values that typified the venerable Venetian Renaissance tradition, even being expelled as an apprentice from the workshop of Titian. This generously illustrated book offers a long-overdue re-evaluation of Tintoretto. Tom Nichols charts the artist's life and work in the context of Venetian art and the culture of the Cinquecento. He shows how the artist created a new manner of painting, which for all its originality and sophistication made its first appeal to the shared emotions of the widest-possible viewing audience. The book deals extensively with Tintoretto's greatest works, including the paintings at the Scuola di San Rocco in Venice."

Louisa Waterford (1818-91), modest, retiring, of good family, renowned for her beauty, and with extraordinary grace, was the embodiment of a Victorian ideal of womanhood. But like the age itself, her life was filled with contrasts and paradoxes. She had been born with artistic gifts, and became a satellite of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, though she had no formal training. Then, at the height of John Ruskin's intellectual power and success as a critic, she asked him to accept her as an art student, and he accepted. Their correspondence- often harshly critical, never, as Waterford put it, falsely praising - lies at the heart of this book. These are letters which open a spectrum of discussion on the cultural, gender and social issues of the period. Both Waterford and Ruskin engaged in tireless philanthropic work for diverse causes, crossing social boundaries with subtle determination, and both responded to a sense of duty as well as an artistic vocation. But, as Ings-Chambers shows, their correspondence was more than a dialogue about society: it helped to make Waterford the artist she became.