Ruskin's God

Front Cover
Cambridge University Press, Nov 28, 1999 - Literary Collections - 302 pages
In this 1999 book, Michael Wheeler challenges critical orthodoxy by arguing that John Ruskin's writing is underpinned by a sustained trust in divine wisdom: a trust nurtured by his imaginative engagement with King Solomon and the temple in Jerusalem, and with the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. In Modern Painters, The Seven Lamps of Architecture and The Stones of Venice, belief in the wisdom of God the Father informed Ruskin's Evangelical natural theology and his celebration of Turner's landscape painting, while the wisdom of God the Son lay at the heart of his Christian aesthetics. Whereas 'the author of Modern Painters' sought to teach his readers how to see architecture, paintings and landscapes, the 'Victorian Solomon' whose religious life was troubled, and who created various forms of modern wisdom literature in works such as Unto this Last, The Queen of the Air and Fors Clavigera, wished to teach them how to live.
 

Contents

in Gods temple
29
The Peace of God and a Christian theory of art
52
a Protestant beholder of St Marks
73
True sacred art and Christ the great high priest
98
a rite of passage in Turin
125
Solomons maxims concerning wealth
155
Science myth and a creative wisdom
180
St George St Francis and the rule of love and wisdom
206
The visible Heaven and apocalyptic wisdom
262
Key to portraits in plate 19
280
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