The Stones of Venice

The Stones of Venice is a three-volume treatise on the art and architecture of Venice by the English art historian John Ruskin. It was first published between 1851 and 1853, and grew out of two stays in the city that Ruskin made with his wife Effie with the specific aim of documenting its buildings. During his research he relied on sketching, a skill in which he excelled, and also on photography, a technique he at first embraced with enthusiasm.

The work examines in detail the architecture of Venice's Byzantine, Gothic and Renaissance periods, describing more than eighty churches, and it also offers a general history of the city. Ruskin meant the book to demonstrate the principles he had set out in his earlier work, The Seven Lamps of Architecture. In the chapter "The Nature of Gothic", in the second volume, he moves beyond aesthetics into social reflection, arguing that the division between those who think and those who work degrades both, and that thought and labour can only be healthy and happy when they are joined.

In the United Kingdom his advocacy of Gothic had a strong influence, and William Morris took up his call for a return to traditional craftsmanship. The French novelist Marcel Proust also acknowledged his debt to Ruskin, although his approach to Venice was more introspective and less concerned with the historical and technical questions that interested the English critic.