Latent in Darkness: John Ruskin's Virtual Guide to the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice

Spatial and environmental conditions of a picture gallery can be rhetorical markers. My reading of John Ruskin's 1877 "Guide to the Principal Pictures in the Academy of Fine Arts" focuses on the way Ruskin aims to raise and develop the reader-viewer’s awareness and critical attention, orienting the gaze through an experience that is unique and contingent. Elements such as a painting’s position, setting, and lighting thus have precise purposes in Ruskin’s discourse, helping the viewer to construct sense and meaning. Pervasive as they are throughout his works, these techniques are of paramount importance in Ruskin's later works. At a time when debates concerning the introduction of artificial light into picture galleries were heating up, Ruskin makes his voice heard against the practice, resisting primarily for conservational reasons, but also, I argue, because he sensed that this might bring about dramatic and deleterious changes in the way we perceive and frame the artwork.