SECTION III., OF TRUTH OF SKIES Chapter I., Of the Open Sky.
John Ruskin
§1.
The peculiar adaptation of the sky to the pleasing and teaching of man.
204
§2.
The carelessness with which its lessons are received.
205
§3.
The most essential of these lessons are the gentlest.
205
§4.
Many of our ideas of sky altogether conventional.
205
§5.
Nature, and essential qualities of the open blue.
206
§6.
Its connection with clouds.
207
§7.
Its exceeding depth.
207
§8.
These qualities are especially given by modern masters.
207
§9.
And by Claude.
208
§10.
Total absence of them in Poussin. Physical errors in his general treatment of open sky.
208
§11.
Errors of Cuyp in graduation of color.
209
§12.
The exceeding value of the skies of the early Italian and Dutch schools. Their qualities are unattainable in modern times.
210
§13.
Phenomena of visible sunbeams. Their nature and cause.
211
§14.
They are only illuminated mist, and cannot appear when the sky is free from vapor, nor when it is without clouds.
211
§15.
Erroneous tendency in the representation of such phenomena by the old masters.
212
§16.
The ray which appears in the dazzled eye should not be represented.
213
§17.
The practice of Turner. His keen perception of the more delicate phenomena of rays.
213
§18.
The total absence of any evidence of such perception in the works of the old masters.
213
§19.
Truth of the skies of modern drawings.
214
§20.
Recapitulation. The best skies of the ancients are, in
quality
, inimitable, but in rendering of various truth, childish.
215
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