Virgin and Child with John: Ruskin’s Typical Romance

Abstract

John Ruskin, in Venice in 1876 to study some frescoes depicting St. Ursula, began having visions of St. Ursula herself, accompanied by the spirit of Rose La Touche. Van Akin Burd publicized these visions in his Christmas Story over twenty years ago, but Ruskin scholarship since has generally ignored them or sought to explain them away. In fact, the Ursuline encounter inaugurated a series of distinctive writings where Ruskin worked out his thinking on desire, girls’ education, art history, and religion. These late devotional writings on girl-saints contribute to the literature of what James Kincaid has called Victorian “child-loving,” yet remind us that Kincaid left out the Child most important to Victorians – the Christ-child. And Ruskin’s markedly Christian thought – while itself notably non-heteronormative – expressly critiques both Victorian scientism and what Ruskin considered the paganism of Walter Pater and his disciples.