John Ruskin: Piazza di Santa Maria del Pianto, Rome, 1840

Mandell, Kristopher Carl

Item

John Ruskin: Piazza di Santa Maria del Pianto, Rome, 1840

Mandell, Kristopher Carl

Abstract

Upon John Ruskin’s first trip to Rome in 1840, when he was twenty-one years old, he created the drawing Piazza di Santa Maria del Pianto. The drawing is a picturesque view, a view Ruskin had been searching for his entire trip to the Continent. Ruskin at this time was ill, broken hearted, and questioning his direction in life. These factors, as well as his exposure to new artistic methods and theories, by way of the artists he met in Rome, catapulted him into a crisis that would have lasting effects on his life and work. From Ruskin’s autobiography Praeterita, it can be seen that Piazza di Santa Maria del Pianto was a defensive declaration of his views of art. The image was part of a process that enabled him to define his future voice as an artist and critic. Piazza di Santa Maria del Pianto was located just outside the main gate of Rome’s Jewish Ghetto. The ghetto was enforced by Pope Paul IV in 1555 and remained in effect until the Unification of Italy in 1870. The ghetto was subsequently demolished in the early twentieth century. Ruskin’s drawing was completed, form an on-site sketch, while the ghetto was still enforced. In addition to the importance of the drawing in the context of Ruskin’s life and work, Piazza di Santa Maria del Pianto has great significance to Jewish and Roman history in that Ruskin has preserved a nineteenth-century view of the primary piazza of Rome’s Jewish Ghetto that is no longer attainable.