This past spring I helped organize an all-day symposium called “Helping in the Work of Creation: John Ruskin and William Morris Today.” The event came out of The Hillside Club Round Table, which I began and lead at Berkeley’s historic Hillside Club, and was co-sponsored by the Guild of St George, the charity founded by Ruskin himself in 1872. The Club was started in 1898 to help shape the new community of Berkeley, not only providing a place of fellowship but helping ensure that Berkeley’s extraordinary natural setting would be enhanced, not destroyed, by what was built there. The Round Table is devoted to exploring the original ideals of the Club, which were deeply influenced by John Ruskin, William Morris, and the Arts and Crafts Movement. The founders, in fact, evidently had something to do with a short-lived Ruskin Club, which had been started by Charles Keeler, the most active and vocal early member.  Among many contributions to the new community, Keeler authored The Simple Home, which served as something of a bible for the Club and reflects a thoroughly Ruskinian point of view on the arts and society.

Symposium speakers framed by the front porch of the Hillside Club. (Back row: Clive Wilmer, Master of the Guild of St George; Sara Atwood; Tim Holton. Front row: Gray Brechin, John Iles, James Spates.)

Because of this debt to Ruskin, I thought it important for the group to delve into his writings and ideas. (An essay I wrote for the Guild’s annual newsletter on Ruskin’s relevance to the founding of the Hillside Club is on page 38 of the pdf, Companion2013_Standard.) So I went online expecting to easily locate a scholar or two here in the academia-heavy Bay Area who’d be willing to come and chat with us for an hour or two. How that modest idea led to our co-sponsoring a symposium with the Guild of St George and hosting the current Master of the Guild—the title first held by the Guild’s founder, Ruskin himself!—can only be attributed to Fors.

Fors Clavigera is the title of a series of “Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain” that Ruskin wrote in the 1870’s. Without my going into the rather cryptic and complex meaning of the whole title, “Fors,” Ruskin explained, “refers to the powers of Chance or Fortune…as she offers to men the conditions of prosperity…” Such powers do indeed seem to account for the remarkable alignment of interests and efforts that brought the Round Table together with American Ruskin scholars James Spates, of Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York, and Sara Atwood (author of Ruskin’s Educational Ideals) of Arizona. Both came out on sort of trial visits to speak to the Round Table and brought considerable enthusiasm to the project of reviving the legacy of a man who a growing number regard as full of wisdom for our own age (“Where is Ruskin when we need him?,” The Financial Times columnist Andrew Hill asked after the 2008 financial collapse). Sara stepped up to serve as the director of the first event, and with her enthusiasm, energy and great expertise instigated our symposium in July, 2013, “No Wealth but Life: Why John Ruskin Matters Today”.

As we were putting it together, Jim and Sara and I agreed it would be good to have a local speaker. I had heard Gray Brechin speak. A fine lecturer and local historian specializing in the New Deal, Gray, I had a hunch, might know something about Ruskin’s local influence, and although I’d never met him, I began thinking I should test my hunch and contact him to sound him out on joining us. No sooner had this idea come to me did Gray appear at one of our Round Table meetings! He’d heard we were showing a documentary on Ruskin, and came to see it. As it happens, he’d written his Master’s thesis on Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice—and so my hunch was right. Gray, with a little arm-twisting, joined Sara and Jim and completed the program admirably.

On the success of that 2013 event, Clive Wilmer, Master of the Guild, felt enthused enough about what we’d started to travel from Cambridge, England for this year’s symposium on Ruskin and Morris. Not only does Clive, in his leadership of the Guild, bear Ruskin’s mantel, but he’s the editor of Penguin anthologies of both Ruskin and Morris. (These are John Ruskin: Unto This Last and Other Writings, and William Morris: News From Nowhere and Other Writings. Both are highly recommended, and include excellent and helpful introductions and notations.) We could not have hoped for a greater coup!

Also coming from England this year was John Iles, who’s running a fantastic effort on the Guild’s lands at Bewdley, working at sustainable forestry and farming.

Sara Atwood returned as director, and also spoke again, as did Jim Spates. I was enormously flattered when the two of them insisted that I provide the point of view of the craftsman—an indispensable perspective, they felt, given the day’s topic.

The six speakers inside the Club. Left to right: John Iles, Jim Spates, Sara Atwood, Master Wilmer, Gray Brechin, Tim Holton.

As someone who counts John Ruskin and William Morris among his greatest heroes, the opportunity to host the Master of the Guild of St George is one of the outstanding privileges of my life. And to share billing with him in a day-long program of lectures I’ll forever look back on with almost giddy pride and pleasure. (I will say that it’s extremely intimidating to be an American lecturer on a program that includes speakers from England, who are not only professional speakers but do, after all, speak actual English.)

But I have to say, what a joy it’s been to work with, come to know, and most of all learn from (the months of preparation felt like a graduate program!) this entire group of Companions (as they’re called) of the Guild—and to be invited to join their fine company! I always laugh when I tell people how it all came about. But other Ruskinians on hearing the tale only smile and nod knowingly, and always with the same reply: “It’s Fors!”

View the program for the symposium, “Helping in the Work of Creation: John Ruskin and William Morris Today”: Ruskin-Morris-2014-Program

Check out James Spates’s blog, Why Ruskin?

Below are recordings of the six talks.

The lectures—

Clive Wilmer (Master of the Guild of St George; Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge )
‘A new road on which the world should travel’: John Ruskin, ‘The Nature of Gothic’ and William Morris
The pivotal chapter of John Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice is a long digression ‘On the Nature of Gothic’. Medieval culture, says Ruskin in that essay, cared more for ‘the individual value of every soul’ than modern culture with its regimented wage-slaves. That value is there to be read in the truth of art. William Morris’s work as craftsman, designer and employer was inspired from the outset by ‘The Nature of Gothic’, which, towards the end of his life, he reprinted at the Kelmscott Press. In his introduction to that edition he argues that Ruskin had identified ‘a new road on which the world should travel’. As Western societies return to the old competitive model, as the networks of social responsibility break down, as we begin to lose the skills of hand and eye, the teaching and example that come down to us from Ruskin and Morris are more and more important. Ruskin’s charity the Guild of St George exists to provide a living example of how things might be otherwise. (Note: A version of this lecture is available in print at The Guild’s website, here…) Listen to audio—

Gray Brechin (U.C. Berkeley)
Bright Morning in the Far West: The Reverend Joseph Worcester’s Bay Area Circle
The major key of the Anglo conquest of the West was a  reckless conversion of its natural resources into legendary fortunes, but a few envisioned possibilities in its landscape and climate for intellectual and spiritual expansion available nowhere else. Chief among them was Swedenborgian minister Joseph Worcester whose charismatic personality attracted a circle of designers whose creations continue to influence thought and lifestyle in California long after Wrorcester’s death. Listen to audio—

Sara Atwood (Guild of St George)
‘A veil of strange intermediate being’: Ruskin and Environment.
Ruskin is sometimes referred to as an early or proto-environmentalist, a clunky term that he would have disliked. Sara Atwood will explore Ruskin’s relationship to modern environmentalism in an effort to understand the significance of his ideas, not as mirroring our own, but in the context of his powerful and personal vision. Listen to audio—

Jim Spates (Guild of St George; Hobart and William Smith Colleges)
‘All of Us are Builders’: The Enduring Relevance of Ruskin’s Seven Lamps of Architecture in the 21st Century, an Illustrated Talk.
“The one form of art in which everyone participates,” Ruskin said, “is architecture.” All the more critical then, he continued, that we know what the enduring principles are which make architecture, anywhere, anytime, great. This illustrated talk, using examples both international and local, will outline the seven principles—or, to use Ruskin’s image, “lamps”—which shine in all great architecture. Listen to audio—

John Iles (Guild of St George)
“Down in the woods something stirs…”
The Wyre Forest is now recognised as the largest contiguous ancient semi-natural woodland in England. In the heart of this woodland lies ‘Ruskin Land’ — land bought for Ruskin by his friend George Baker. In this place current Companions of Ruskin’s charity, the Guild of St George, are working to realise Ruskin’s vision of “making some small piece of England beautiful, peaceful and fruitful.” John Iles will discuss ongoing and future projects. Listen to audio—

Tim Holton (Holton Studio Frame-Makers, The Hillside Club Round Table and Guild of St George)
The Joiners’ Tale: A Craftsman’s Window on Ruskin and Morris
“Have you considered,” challenged Ruskin, “in the early history of painting how important also is the history of the frame-maker? It is a matter, I assure you, needing our very best consideration.” The art of the picture frame offers an extraordinary window on the thought of Ruskin and Morris, being a “visible token” of the great problem at the center of their ideals: the place of art—the relation of the arts to each other, to life and to all labor. Being in numerous ways an art of joinery, it provides a tangible and exceptionally helpful way of understanding the great aims of two men who were themselves joiners—who above all sought “to reconstitute the world.” Listen to audio—

In the nineteenth century, reflecting the great turmoil that the arts were going through, many painters protested what could be called “the gold frame convention”—not only a prevailing taste but an actual rule among exhibitions that paintings must receive gilded settings. “[A] very prevalent error is to set almost all pictures in frames gilded all over,” complained a London art critic in the pages of  the trade magazine The Cabinet Maker and Art Furnisher in 1883. “Few pictures are of such brilliance as to be able to bear such a mass of bright gold without detriment to their effect.” Fortunately, the critic observed, “some artists are taking a healthy departure” and turning to dark wood frames—cabinetmaker’s frames, as they’re called—as a superior enhancement, and cited a work by George Clausen, shown at London’s reform-minded Grosvenor Gallery, that was framed in dark walnut. Clausen was just one example of countless painters of the age who were searching for “a way out of the gilded frame.”

The significance of such expressions of protest against artistic conventions is a fascinating and vast topic (one I hope to write about eventually), but at the end of the day what matters is which type of setting helps the picture better—which approach serves, that is, the whole reason for pictures which is to help us see the world. (This concern was, in the end, the underlying concern of reformist painters turning to unconventional frames.) To answer that question (guess where I come down!) I’ve just made a new webpage of “before” and “after” pictures of paintings that came to us in gold frames and how they look in the dark hardwood frames we re-framed them in. Below are five of the most recent such examples.

Learn more and see more examples on the new webpage, Fixing a “Very Prevalent Error”: The Cabinetmaker’s Answer to the Gold Frame Convention.

Benjamin Williams Leader, “A Beach On the Southwest Coast,” 1888. Oil on canvas, 16″ x 24″.

Cassily Adams (1843-1921), “A Poker Game After Work,” n.d. Oil on canvas, 12″ x 18″.

William Keith, untitled (Donner Lake), 1885. Oil on canvas, 20″ x 30″.

Lorenzo Latimer, untitled (California landscape), 1880. Oil on board, 5″ x 13″.

ZS Liang, “The Sacred War Pipe,” no date (contemporary). Oil on canvas, 38″ x 24″.

A year ago I posted in the portfolio a large painting by Arnold Friberg, “The Eyes of Chief Joseph”, which we were especially proud to frame. Just recently we got to frame three more by this important American illustrator. All are in substantial carved quartersawn oak frames. More on Friberg here… See “The Eyes of Chief Joseph” here…

This first example features a cassetta frame similar to the one we used on “The Eyes of Chief Joseph”, but with more suitable hexagons instead of circles (compare too with the last example, below). The profile is 4-1/2″ wide plus a narrow copper leaf liner.

Arnold Friberg, “Masters of Their Trade”. Oil on canvas, 25″ x 40″.

For the one below, we chose a mitered frame to enhance the strong perspective, which, by the way, is especially significant in light of the theme of the painting. This frame too is about 4-1/2″ wide.

Arnold Friberg, “The Welcoming Committee”. Oil on canvas, 31″ x 40″.

This one below is in a frame similar to the on “The Eyes of Chief Joseph.” Note the justification of the circle motif in the frame compared to the first example above with hexagons.

Arnold Friberg, “He’s Yours, My Son,” 1996. Oil on canvas, 30″ x 48″.

Detail of carved cassetta frame.

A shop selling handcrafted frames should have a handcrafted sign. So a few weeks ago we had our name painted in the window by a for-real sign painter—a breed of artisan that not long ago many thought would soon be made extinct by vinyl signs. Derek MacDonald and Tina Vines (and Herbie the boxer) are Golden West Sign Arts in Berkeley, and make signs the good old fashioned way: with the mighty hand. The letters are 23 kt gold leaf with a black drop-shadow.

Great job, guys! Need a sign painter? Give them a call!

We recently framed this 1898 oil painting by notable California artist Mary Curtis Richardson (1848-1931) titled “Hal & His Dog”. Hal is comfortably seated in—and so framed by—a sturdy mission oak chair. From this, and also (conveniently) in harmony with the somewhat loose brush work, we settled on a distinctly mission oak kind of frame, in a suitable Medieval Oak stain. This is a compound Aurora frame: the flat is our No. 1100, a chamfered mortise-and-tenon form, and it’s capped with a simple No. 1. The whole profile is 3″ wide, plus a 3/16″ pale gold slip. The design is plain, but the stepping effect of the cap and the chamfer takes you in to the painting nicely, the 45 degree angle of the chamfer also enhances the angles of the arms of a boy trying on the adult sense of authority he feels sitting in a chair just slightly too big for him.

Hope Hal feels at home.

Mary Curtis Richardson, “Hal and His Dog,” 1898. Oil on canvas, 16″ x 12″.

Corner detail

I’ve been writing about some of Italy’s most spectacular frames, including the Basilica San Marco in Venice and Giotto’s Tower in Florence, and great lessons their stones still teach about the place of art and the unity of the arts—two fundamental concerns of the frame-maker, and of the Arts and Crafts Movement. The Palazzo Publico in Siena, a third stop on our trip this summer following in John Ruskin’s footsteps through northern Italy, is another great frame, with its own great lessons written in stone—and painted in plaster.

Siena’s medieval Palazzo Publico

As he did in the first two cities, Ruskin read in Siena’s Gothic buildings understandings about the fundamental nature of civilization, its laws and its arts—eternal truths deeply at odds with the industrial age in Britain. Siena’s 14th century town council chamber, La Sale de Pace, or Room of Peace, frames an extraordinary set of frescoes, painted by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in 1338-9, in which Ruskin recognized a profound vision and understanding of good and bad government, and their effects on the life of a people. The frescoes are the basis of a fascinating discussion by Ruskin, in his book A Joy Forever, about how, in his allegory, Lorenzetti doesn’t allow the virtues that guide good government—Faith, Hope, and Charity above all—to be idle, but puts them to work! Work, which is the theme at the heart of Ruskin’s thought, is indeed the underlying theme of the vision of society Ruskin so admired in Lorenzetti’s frescoes.

We tend to trivialize the Arts and Crafts Movement, the seeds of which were planted by Ruskin, by reducing it to being largely concerned with stuff. The truth is, the stuff was only important as a direct expression of the life and labor that produced it. The Arts and Crafts was truly a social movement. Many have characterized its leanings as utopian and, therefore, unobtainable. But its visions endure nevertheless to challenge our complacency, our lack of social imagination, our denigration of labor, and our capacity and will to virtuous civic practices. In this respect medieval frescoes such as Lorenzetti’s inspired not only Ruskin but William Morris, who also praised the didactic and visionary role of medieval art, and railed against modern work’s loss of vision. He once wrote,

Civilization has reduced the workman to such a skinny and pitiful existence, that he scarcely knows how to frame a desire for any life much better than that which he now endures perforce. It is the province of art to set the true ideal of a full and reasonable life before him, a life to which the perception and creation of beauty, the enjoyment of real pleasure that is, shall be felt to be as necessary to man as his daily bread.

Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s murals

It seems to me that Lorenzetti was a workman who enjoyed a healthy existence that afforded him plenty of thought about what comprised a good life—a truly civilized life characterized by beautiful work. He was an artist who was afforded by his republican civic patrons the freedom of imagination and intellect to frame such a desire. It’s telling—the enduring frescoes tell us in no uncertain terms—that such dreams of a true republic and commonwealth were not only deemed by Siena’s leaders worthy of spectacular framing in a beautifully built and decorated room but were deemed worthy of framing them in the solemn deliberations convened in that room.

These were people who took their ideals seriously enough that they were determined to live by them, and to have them always before the people as a visible standard against which they would be judged.

As did the bas reliefs on Giotto’s Tower in Florence, Lorenzetti’s frescoes in Siena offer wonderful evidence, in Italy’s medieval republics, of the noble place and standing of the handcrafts and humbler arts. They are always given their due regard from “fine” artists who clearly make no effort to separate themselves from the humbler craftsmen, as they would from the Renaissance onward. Frescoes prove Ruskin’s argument for the unity of art that prevailed in the middle ages, an argument he directed not least of all to his Victorian contemporaries who insisted on treating painting as a separate and isolated, superior art having nothing to do with the “merely” decorative arts that comprise architecture. Lorenzetti clearly had no compunctions about the constraints of painting the walls of a room. Such compunctions are a modern problem—one that Ruskin railed against. The modern painter is not a greater artist because he’s given up the frankly more decorative art of mural painting for the independence of easel painting. “Get rid… at once of any idea of Decorative art being a degraded or a separate kind of art,” Ruskin wrote.

Its nature or essence is simply its being fitted for a definite place; and, in that place, forming part of a great and harmonious whole, in companionship with other art; and so far from this being a degradation to it—so far from Decorative art being inferior to other art because it is fixed to a spot—on the whole it may be considered as rather a piece of degradation that it should be portable. Portable art—independent of all place—is for the most part ignoble art.

Passionate as he was about the unity of the arts, we have to pardon Ruskin’s hyperbole. (That he did make allowances is evident from the fact that his six-volume Modern Painters, was, after all, devoted to a painter of portable art, JMW Turner.) If not absolute, though, history demonstrates a strong tendency of people to give their greatest ideals permanent place and form in that most permanent, most public and collaborative art, architecture. Permanently embedded and integrated expressions are not likely to be devoted to fleeting whims or ephemeral oddities of purely personal self-expression. Instead, their lasting nature befits enduring, timeless and deeply rooted values and aspirations of the whole citizenry.

Ruskin identifies in Gothic architecture the ancient understanding of work—human labor; the arts of civilization—that we find for example in the Book of Sirach, in the Apocrypha, which speaks of craftsmen who “each becometh wise in his own work.” “Without them,” it says, “shall no city be inhabited.” Though they are not rulers or legislators, judges or clergymen, still “they shall maintain the fabric of the world; and in the handiwork of their craft is their prayer.”

Detail of Concordia holding a joiner’s handplane

All the arts, no matter how utilitarian or humble, are seen as involving and embodying significance, importance and meaning for the whole community—the “fabric of the world”, and the social fabric of the towns, like Siena, that comprise it. Lorenzetti’s Sale de Pace frescoes exemplify this pre-modern worldview beautifully. Reading the lessons of the Allegory of Good Government from left to right, they begin with the source of benign rule in the figure of Justice. At the feet of the figure of Justice sits another figure cradling in her lap an emblem of an ideal at the root of good government—no abstract, complex, obscure or obtuse sign understood only by scholars and philosophers, but a humble carpenter’s or cabinetmaker’s hand plane. On the plane is inscribed “Concordia,” or harmony. The type of long plane the figure is holding is called a jointer plane, and is a primary tool of the joiner. It’s used to smooth and level, as well as “joint” the edges of boards that are to be glued up edge-to-edge. The word harmony derives from the Latin harmonia—joining, or concord; and from the Greek harmos, meaning joint. According to the great Anglo-Indian art historian, Ananda Coomaraswamy (1877-1947), “‘harmony’ was first of all a carpenter’s word meaning ‘joinery,’ and…it was inevitable, equally in the Greek and the Indian traditions that the Father and the Son should have been ‘carpenters’…” Thus the joiner’s hand plane represents the ideal of civic harmony—society well-joined. There could hardly be a better symbol of the relation of work—the dignity and essential role of ordinary labor—to the great problem of social justice.

“Allegory of Good Government”

But the theme of the joining of society, of a healthy social fabric, is only begun. Ropes from the figures of Mercy and Punishment that flank Justice pass through Harmony’s hand to a procession of noblemen, each grasping the rope, and so are joined to it and joined together, as they head toward the large ruling figure representing the Common Good, beside whom sit the virtues. The ends of the ropes are held by the Common Good, thus connecting him to Justice and the people.

“Effects of Good Government”—the town

.

The adjacent wall to the right of the allegory of Good Government depicts the effects of such policy; and in Lorenzetti’s view, the place of the ordinary artisan in Siena is—everywhere. The arts thrive in a healthy town of contented, industrious folk joined in cooperative effort, happy commerce and mutual provision. We can see the shops of cobblers, potters, metalsmiths. There’s a teacher before his class of attentive students. Men (and, according to at least one scholar, a woman) build in the background of a city beautifully composed of diverse houses, towers and shops, civic buildings and a church (Siena’s great cathedral—placed well into the background!). And in the foreground is a wedding procession followed by a group of beautifully dressed women, hands joined in festive song and dance. It’s an example of the once commonplace collective joy, rooted in Dionysus and most commonly practiced in carnival, that Barbara Ehrenreich writes about in her wonderful history Dancing in the Streets.

The Effects of Good Government

But the town occupies just half this fresco. The city wall divides the fresco down the middle, with the right half of the whole composition devoted to agriculture. There, busy farmers tend healthy fields and livestock. A road carries traffic to and from the city; urban and rural life co-exist in happy mutuality. With the greater good successfully presiding, the angel of Security hovers over the town and surrounding countryside.

Opposite this wall, to the left of the Allegory of Good Government, Lorenzetti juxtaposes for us the Allegory and Effects of Bad Government. (Water damage has destroyed much of this mural. The Sienese say this means bad government doesn’t last.) Tyranny rules, aided by the vices, and Justice lies bound at his feet. Life under such government, the painter shows us, is not good. Discord and destruction characterize city and countryside. Above this land looms the angel of Fear.

In the debate about rebuilding Britain’s House of Commons after it was bombed by the angels of fear dispatched by the German Nazis, Winston Churchill said, “We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.” It’s something that was understood in 14th century Siena, where they constructed La Sale de Pace to shape the ideals of the Council of Nine and guide them in their duties. Lorenzetti surrounded them with reminders of their civic obligations, and of how a city should be governed, of how well we all might live if we govern ourselves well—or how terrible life might be if we fail to do so.

Among the abundant lessons housed in Siena’s La Sale de Pace—including the roots and bases of civic harmony, the unity of the arts—lies a profound lesson about framing pictures. While our ideals aren’t always as lofty as Lorenzetti’s, nor as permanent as his frescoes, the frames we provide for them should nevertheless offer solidity and enduring place as part of the architecture of our homes and the settings for our daily lives. The images we choose to hang in our homes often express and, as Morris said, frame our desire for a “full and reasonable life.” When we frame pictures, we frame ideals, and those ideals then frame, and shape, us.

Learn more about the Lorenzetti murals…

Read “Framing Paradise in the Stones of Venice”…

Read “What Ruskin Saw Framed in the Stones of Florence”…

One day in the 1860’s Ruskin had stood here at the base of the Campanile in Florence, his famously observant eyes captivated, darting back and forth between the sketchbook in his hand and one particular engraved stone just above eye level on the tower’s north wall. What architectural detail could possibly be so fascinating and significant?

19th century photo of Giotto’s Tower

Having studied my Ruskin, I knew what it was. I’ve never found the drawing, but have photographs of the stone carving. Ruskin spoke about it in an 1872 lecture called “The Relation of Engraving to the Other Arts of Florence” in which 19th century Britain’s pre-eminent art critic, surveying the works of that great seat of Renaissance art, startles his audience with the question, “Have you considered, in the early history of painting, how important also is the history of the frame-maker?” Anticipating their surprise, he added, “It is a matter, I assure you, needing our very best consideration.” The lecture contains a powerful lesson in the significance of frames and profound purpose of the art of framing pictures. And now at last I had a chance to see in person what Ruskin saw—the source of such revelation as to the worthiness of my own craft.

So, while I was by no means happy to leave Paradise (and no, I wasn’t thrown out, like some people), a great reward awaited me in Florence. Yes, Florence has cars, but it at least wasn’t built for cars. Nor was it built by slaves to please the egos of emperors, as Rome was. Florence has this in common with Venice: for a modern city, it’s still humane. It’s human scale and highly walk-able. And the medieval parts at least were built by a people free to put their humanity into their work.

Base of Giotto’s Tower

Florence, like Venice, was one of Italy’s great medieval republics. A flourishing society, its arts naturally flourished as well, and none more than its architecture, the true basis of all the constructive arts, Ruskin believed. In the famous Duomo, Baptistry, and Campanile he called “the most perfect tower in Europe,” Ruskin saw manifested the extraordinary state of civic solidarity and consequent extraordinary harmony and unity among the arts of the Florentine Republic. Ruskin dubbed the Campanile he so admired “The Shepherd’s Tower,” expressing the humble origins of its architect, Giotto, once a mere shepherd boy from a nearby rural village. Giotto and his cohorts carved in a set of stones that encircle the base of the tower representations of many arts—both fine arts and the arts of industry key to the city’s prosperity. The professor pointed out to his students the inclusiveness and variety of arts honored, and all on the same level, with equal artistic treatment: building, agriculture, pottery, metal forging, weaving, etc., right along with the fine arts you would expect to see, sculpture and painting. Thus the buildings of the medieval Republic, the expression of powerful civic pride, exemplify the true nature of architecture as the most public and cooperative art, “the work of the whole race,” as Ruskin called it.

The bas relief representing weaving

But what consumed Ruskin throughout his life, as you may know, was the rise and decay of societies—the implications of which for his own troubled age he was anxiously aware. And around 1500, after a few hundred vital years, the extraordinarily cohesive state of medieval Florentine society began to come apart, and its arts were never again to be depicted in such inclusiveness and equality as they were around Giotto’s tower. Instead, as they fell into division and disunion they were increasingly marked by a “trenchant separation” between the “fine” and the minor arts.

In his lecture, Ruskin used a carefully composed timeline to painstakingly chart this story of disunion, with the names and dates of Florence’s most famous artists, and with this evidence, summed up its meaning. Among the artists of 1300, he says,

The bas relief representing building

four of the five men are architects as well as sculptors and painters. In the 1400 group, there is one architect; in the 1500, none. And the meaning of that is, that in 1300 the arts were all united, and duly led by architecture; in 1400, sculpture began to assume too separate a power to herself; in 1500, painting arrogated all, and, at last, betrayed all. From which, with much other collateral evidence, you may justly conclude that the three arts ought to be practiced together, and that they naturally are so.

Exemplifying the old unified, civically embedded art, Ruskin says, is Giotto’s “bell tower, to ring all over the town, when they were either to pray together, rejoice together or to be warned of danger.” And driving home his point, Ruskin brings out, as illustration, the drawing he had made at the foot of that tower. “I made a little sketch, when last in Florence,” he says,

of a subject which will fix the idea of this unity of the arts in your minds. At the base of the tower of Giotto are two rows of hexagonal panels filled with bas reliefs. Some of these are by unknown hands, —some by Andrea Pisano, some by Lucca della Robbia, two by Giotto himself; of these I sketched the panel representing the art of Painting. You have in the bas-relief one of the foundation stones of the most perfectly-built tower in Europe; you have that stone carved by its architect’s own hand; you find, further, that this architect and sculptor was the greatest painter of his time, and the friend of the greatest poet [Dante]; and you have represented by him a painter in his shop…as symbolic of the entire art of painting.

In the sketch before them, Ruskin’s students saw the painter leaning into his easel (note the stool tipping) with the attitude of eagerness and anticipation of the reward awaiting him—a Gothic triptych frame adorned with crockets and occupying nearly half of the composition. “In which representation,” the professor went on,

please note how carefully Giotto shows you the tabernacles, or niches, in which the paintings are to be placed. Not independent of their frames, these panels of his, you see!

And finally, his revelation of the meaning of this image representative of the art of painting, but nearly half of which is occupied by one of the relatively minor crafts:

    Have you considered, in the early history of painting, how important also is the history of the frame-maker? It is a matter, I assure you, needing our very best consideration. For the frame was made before the picture. The painted window is much, but the aperture it fills was thought of before it. The fresco by Giotto is much, but the vault it adorns was planned first.

“And in pointing out to you this fact,” he concluded, “I may once for all prove to you the essential unity of the arts, and show you how impossible it is to understand one without reference to another.”

Giotto’s Tower, Florence

His audience must have scoffed. “You take us to Florence, home of renaissance geniuses, not to show us great paintings but to show us…the FRAMES???” What Ruskin saw, however, in the stones of Florence, at the foundation of one of its great artistic achievements, was clear evidence from another age, of a great architect, sculptor and painter’s acknowledgement and praise of a humbler but no less worthy art—one of the many minor arts that comprise the great art of architecture and on which the fine arts depend for their place in civilization. He saw an art that had originally been frankly architectural and devoted to connecting pictures to their larger settings; the vital ancestor of an art now fallen into decay, corrupted and abused to isolate and separate painting—the art that had “arrogated all”—from the humbler decorative arts and from the “vulgar” surrounding world.

Something Ruskin said in another context applies here as well: “Do not think I am irreverently comparing great things and small. The system of the world is entirely one; small things and great are alike part of one mighty whole.” What Ruskin saw in that carved stone on Giotto’s Tower was the picture frame as emblematic of the primal unity of all the arts—fine and “lesser”. He saw the original purpose and power of the frame to unify and join the most individual and isolated art—painting—with the most public and cooperative art—architecture. He saw the frame as standing for all the denigrated “lesser” arts—what he called “the vital craftsmanship of the world,” the great thing holding it all together.

Book learning in such matters is one thing; witnessing and partaking in civilization’s monumental achievements, even to the limited extent a mere tourist does, is something else altogether. Ruskin in Florence was a man possessed by discovering the vital laws of art and society. Against the prejudices the modern audience held toward the middle ages, which they called “the dark ages,” he recognized in that time what historians now acknowledge: the medieval republics were vital societies, outstanding in human history, the evidence of their vitality fully visible in the unity of their arts and the great outgrowth of their peoples’ labor.

Following in his footsteps, seeing what he saw, now I too was possessed—my soul possessed by the knowledge that even as a mere frame-maker, I am bound, as all craftsmen are, to help join the world; and am joined to innumerable artists and artisans both living and passed away, but all united in the work of the whole race, the enduring arts of civilization, the vital craftsmanship of the world.

View a good short discussion of the reliefs at the base of  Giotto’s Tower, here.

Not for the faint of heart, read the entire lecture, “The Relation of Engraving to the Other Arts of Florence,” here.

Read Framing Paradise in the Stones of Venice…

Read Framing a Good Life: Lessons from the Stones of Siena…

More images—

John Ruskin called Venice the Paradise of Cities. And so it is. Last month I spent five days in Paradise, which I can report is—curiously enough—populated mostly by tourists who don’t plan to stay long. (Maybe they all have bad consciences and don’t think they really deserve to be there).

Venice, by JMW Turner

Two other things to know about Paradise: first, in Paradise, life is all about Paradise, not the will of its ruler, heavenly or earthly (as it was in many old cities), nor your own getting ahead (as it is in all modern cities); and, second, it’s made by hand. It’s a work of substantial devotion. These two things must be considered together, because Rome was also built by hand (and certainly not in a day, as a tour guide there confirmed for me), but that city was built by slaves who must have hated the place along with its tyrannical rulers. Venice, on the other hand, is a work of love and devotion for a city, by a city of free craftsmen. The Serene Republic (“La Serenissima”), as the name implies, was built on the sovereignty of the people, not the Doge, whose power was carefully kept in check (that’s why he was a doge—or duke—and not a king).

Tintoretto’s massive (82 foot long), “Il Paradiso,” 1588, in the Main Hall of The Doge’s Palace in Venice

And the infinite variety of detail unified in a whole city (well, the medieval parts at least) as a work of art is the product of countless artisans given relatively free reign, governed primarily by their individual practiced artistic powers (cultivated, in many if not most cases, over generations), their pride and joy in those powers, combined with their love for their city and their communal life. (See Ruskin’s “The Nature of Gothic” for much more on that.) That fact is visible and evident at every turn, and is what makes you know when you’re there that you are in something pretty close to Paradise. Also there are no cars. That is, the former Serene Republic is still relatively serene. It’s not only built by human beings, it’s built for human beings, not machines. It’s humane, and human scale, and—being something people really believed in—it’s built to last. Therein lie a few lessons for our modern city planners and architects—well, for all of us, in fact.

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While many cities are homes to great works of art, the architecture of the whole city of Venice is one big work of art, one great frame for the life of the city—a frame to honor not only a particular place but the ancient idea and ideal of civitas, and true civilization. At the center of this frame and great work of many arts all cooperating to one end is, of course, Piazza San Marco, the great public square, a place for the people of the city to gather, and its renowned cathedral built for the whole city to worship together. Worth noting, too, is the piazza’s medieval clock tower, and especially the composition of its face: above the clock is a sculpture of the Madonna and child; but above that symbol of the Christian Church is the winged lion, symbol of Venice’s patron saint, St Mark, and so of the city of Venice itself. The meaning of this arrangement, as any true Venetian will tell you with a mischievous smile, is that the City is above the Church. In any case, evidence abounds that the devout civic religion of Venice was, if not exactly superior to, was at least inseparable from the faith taught by the Church. If you couldn’t serve the city favored by one of its primary saints, how could you possibly serve the will of the saint and the church? If you couldn’t commune with the civic body, how could you possibly commune in the body of Christ that is the Church? If you couldn’t believe in the immediate heavenly city, how could you possibly believe in an eternal Heavenly City—or a Heavenly Father?

So the adjacent St Mark’s Basilica not only frames many, many works of art including spectacular mosaics—4000 square meters of them!—that are part of the frame, but, more importantly, must be understood as once being the central frame of the civilized life of La Serenissima. And how did the people of Paradise frame the entrance to their most sacred temple built by and for the communion of the citizenry? This is how Ruskin, in St Mark’s Rest, his guide to and meditation on Venice, described the underside of the central arch on the front of the basilica:

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I have been speaking hitherto of the front of the arch only. Underneath it, the sculpture is equally rich, and much more animated. It represents, — What think you, or what would you have, good reader, if you were yourself designing the central archivolt of your native city, to companion, and even partly to sustain, the stones on which those eight Patriarchs were carved — and Christ?

The great men of your city, I suppose, — or the good women of it? or the squires round about it? with the Master of the hounds in the middle? or the Mayor and Corporation? Well. That last guess comes near the Venetian mind, only it is not my Lord Mayor, in his robes of state, nor the Corporation at their city feast; but the mere Craftsmen of Venice — the Trades, that is to say, depending on handicraft, [including] the shipwrights,… the givers of wine and bread…the carpenter, the smith, and the fisherman…

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[T]he order…is then thus:

1. Fishing.
2. Forging.
3. Sawing. Rough carpentry?
4. Cleaving wood with axe. Wheelwright?
5. Cask and tub making.
6. Barber-surgery.
7. Weaving.
Keystone—Christ the Lamb; i.e., in humiliation.
8. Masonry.
9. Pottery.
10. The Butcher.
11. The Baker.
12. The Vintner.
13. The Shipwright. And
14. The rest of old age ?

Butchers? Potters? Carved over the central entrance to one of the world’s greatest churches??? These stones speak, Ruskin points out. These stones that frame a great work of art speak strange and forgotten things. They say that a great work of art should be humble enough to acknowledge its debt and its service to the ordinary workers and the most commonplace arts and labors. The difference between ordinary work and fine art is often only the difference of greater devotion and purpose. And that is how some of the world’s greatest artists, builders of the great Basilica San Marco, framed art, and their understanding of what art is, and who is an artist—the true place of art.

So here, via Ruskin, is another lesson from Paradise. Human beings can build, and have built, cities of heavenly beauty and joy—cities that honor and give pride of place to the wonderful power of the mighty hand. Our hands, as Venice proves, have the power to build true civilization, a heavenly city built by all its citizens, built for all its citizens—right here on Earth. In the opening words of the final volume of Modern Painters, Ruskin questions the entire conventional reading of Genesis. “What can we conceive of that first Eden which we might not yet win back, if we chose?,” he asks. It turns out that whole “curse of labor” thing is a fallacy. Following Ruskin’s lead, the great Arts and Crafts architect WR Lethaby wrote, “Hidden in early Christian teaching are ideas which we never hear of now. One of these was the thought that the ‘curse’ was a blessing. It is probable, indeed, that the whole glorious unfolding of mediaeval art sprang from a thought of the heroism of labour.” He found in one medieval explanation of depictions of Genesis that Adam’s spade and Eve’s spindle were not the tools to which they were condemned but “the instruments of their redemption”. We thought that spell we had in the Garden of Eden was one big holiday, life on the dole, that Paradise was labor-free, and that’s why, since our fall from grace, we have to work, and that our work has to be miserable. Nope. Turns out Paradise is, in fact, very labor intensive. Sure, working the stones of Venice could be as hard as working stones anywhere. But there, in the Paradise of Cities—to what great purpose! And having a worthy, honorable and enduring purpose—and working toward the purpose of a wealth in which the workman enjoys a share, a wealth that honors him, and welcomes and expects him to enjoy the opportunity to express himself in his work, and his joy in helping in the work of creation—makes all the difference in how he feels about his labors.

But not only that. Turns out that the whole story that we’ve been permanently booted out of Paradise isn’t true. It can’t be—I was just there!

Yes, I would’ve happily stayed. In any case, I sure took home a good lesson about how they once framed art in Paradise, and maybe how it might be framed again—if we’re good, honest and true to our work and to the greater good of the places where we live.

FOOTNOTE: Many argue that Venice has a checkered history, containing many despicable deeds, and should in no way be regarded as Edenic. But to them I’d have to say that the material evidence abundantly proves the civic values and devotions of a people who, taken as a whole and for a substantial portion, certainly not all, of their history, and whether or not their values were shared by everyone at all times, at least generally and characteristically demonstrated and practiced a faith in res publica—public matters, subordinating personal power and individual interest to the interests of the commonwealth. And, further, they did so with extraordinary engagement with the materials of the natural creation, and used their lives to cultivate and substantially contribute to the creation. They were, in short, on to something. And to live among such people would be, at least for me, Paradise enough.

Read “What Ruskin Saw Framed in the Stones of Florence”…

Read “Framing a Good Life: Lessons from the Stones of Siena”…

We had a terrific opening a couple of weeks ago for our current show, “A California Spring.” It’s up for 2 more weeks (closing Saturday, May 31), and we’d love to have you come by to see this great display of dozens of new works by fourteen highly talented painters. Preview it here. Here are some highlights:

< Sharon Calahan has two seascapes with her characteristically masterful capturing of light. This one is an 11″ x 14″ called “Stillwater Cove.”

> For a wood guy like me this one that pastel artist Bill Cone calls “Fallen” comes complete with the rich smells of the forest, sounds of birds, old redwood needles underfoot… Or maybe that’s just my imagination.

< Kevin Courter’s nocturnes never fail to send me into a still and contemplative mood, as does “Passages.” I love how this dark red-brown stain on cherry works with much of Kevin’s work.

> Christin Coy really excels at moody wetland scenes like “Afternoon Fog, Marin Wetlands” (18″ x 18″). What a hand she has when it comes to the subtle tonalities of our characteristic light.

< Speaking of having down the light of northern California, Mark Farina‘s no slouch either. Check out this 12″ x 16″ oil, “Up on Outlook Drive.”

> I was very pleased to get some larger pieces from Bob Flanary again after quite a long spell. This wonderful work of tonalism, at 18″ x 24″, is called “A Misty Place.” You can stare at it a long, long…

…

time…

< Is anything more iconic of northern California than Highway One? Here it is captured by Paul Kratter in a depiction that speaks to every native—and not a few tourists. It’s called “Left Turn at the Pines,” 15″ x 29″.

> Certainly one of the highlights of the show is introducing Richard Lindenberg to our friends and followers—at least to those who don’t already know him, since he’s been making quite a name for himself in the region. This  a wonderful, quiet wetland scene called “Pacheco Pond Mist” (12″ x 12″).

< I confess I’m limiting my highlights here to pieces that haven’t sold. We did sell a large James McGrew painting of Half Dome, but this sweet little 8″ x 6″, “Last Light on Half Dome” is nothing to sneeze at either.

> Terry Miura recently wrote on his blog about the element of mystery that he constantly strives for. If California has meant anything to the world, its ever-changing and diverse landscape has meant mystery—allure, possibility, getting lost in vast, humbling natural spaces. It’s all here in “Almost Forgotten,” 9″ x 13-1/2″.

< Robin Moore‘s watercolors fascinate nearly everyone who steps in to the Gallery. The extraordinary color of “Sunset at Flood Time—Martinez” (8″ x 12-1/2″) intrigued many an eye at the reception.

> I don’ t know how anyone could better capture the spirit of a particular place than Ernesto Nemesio does in “Pinnacles at Spring” (9″ x 12″).

< At 22″ x 36″, Paul Roehl‘s “Sunrise, Fremont” was the biggest painting on display, and is a great example of Paul’s love for his native landscape. He grew up in Fremont, and this painting captures the feel of the mornings when he’d get up early to go fishing. It’s also a great example of his love of California tonalism.

> Erik Tiemens continues to tap the great period of European landscape painting to develop his astounding technique and inspire and explore his own discoveries of rural northern California.

I hope the great California painters of a century ago are appreciating what this group of artists is doing to honor and uphold and, above all, keep vital the tradition they started. Getting to frame their paintings is one of the great joys of my life.

Please don’t deprive yourself! Come see and enjoy this rich, varied and beautiful work!

Views of the display—