Page:Val d'Arno (Ruskin, 1890).djvu/281

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APPENDIX.
247

rejoice in it for. Precisely the qualities which are not in the modern drawings, are the essential virtues of the early sculpture. If you like the Gruner outlines best, you need not trouble yourself to go to Orvieto, or anywhere else in Italy. Sculpture, such as those outlines represent, can be supplied to you by the acre, to order, in any modern Academician's atelier. But if you like the strange, rude, quaint Gothic realities (for these photographs are, up to a certain point, a vision of the reality) best; then, don't study mediæval art under the direction of modern illustrators. Look at it—for however short a time, where you can find it—veritable and untouched, however moulded or shattered. And abhor, as you would the mimicry of your best friend's manners by a fool, all restorations and improving copies. For remember, none but fools think they can restore—none but worse fools, that they can improve.

292. Examine these outlines, then, with extreme care, and point by point. The things which they have refused or lost, are the things you have to love, in Giovanni Pisano.

I will merely begin the task of examination, to show you how to set about it. Take the