SOURCE: “The Architecture of Empire: ‘Oriental’ Gothic and the Problem of British Identity in Ruskin's Venice,” in Victorian Literature and Culture, Vol. 25, No. 1, 1997, pp. 109-20.

In the following essay, Ogden explores how John Ruskin helped to introduce elements of Orientalism into the Gothic Revival in Great Britain by shifting focus in his Stones of Venice from medieval Britain to medieval Italy.

[T]he race of Giotto & Orcagna & Dante were a very different people from those of the present day—& I do honestly believe the Grand duke to be one of the best of monarchs, but the Italians are certainly not made to live under either emperors or Kings. If you could but see, as I do, near & close, the mighty crowds of the dead that stand in countless portraiture on the walls of the Novella & the Carmine—grand, thoughtful, self commanding men—soldiers, statesmen, poets, Fathers of the...