What is it about?
This is the editors' introduction to 'John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Religious Imagination' (an essay collection, Palgrave, 2023). If you're going to talk about Ruskin, you have to talk about theology and the Bible in the same breath as the visual arts. Ruskin lived both. Ruskin imagined heaven by looking in detail at, and painting, our imperfect earthly world, and he demanded the act of looking itself be considered one of faithful devotion. He also found in the creations of the Pre-Raphaelites an affirmation of this visual theology, and this work in turn influenced a widening circle of creative men and women: the editors outline the visual, social, and ecclesial links from Ruskin to Rossetti, from Mary Watts and Henrietta Barnett, and from church to printed or painted page.
Featured Image
Photo by Henrique Ferreira on Unsplash
Why is it important?
It can be difficult to know where to start with Ruskin. This introduction brings clarity to his primary axis of visual theology, and in particular to visual theology that is alive with natural, descriptive, luminous, imagery. The language of the natural world - so forward in our minds today - comes into its spiritually imaginative own.
Perspectives
Ruskin had a photographic eye which was also full of the Bible's imagination. Writing this introduction was a way of mapping and comparing how others have seen this, how they describe their own interpretations of his theology, and how the Victorians gave us big ideas which we can still run with. The 'sacre conversazioni' continues...
Dr Sheona Beaumont
King's College London
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Introduction: ‘All Great Art Is Praise’ John Ruskin, January 2023, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-21554-4_1.
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