"Filled with thoughts of flowing leafage and fiery life": John Ruskin's Venice - Fragility and Flux

Venice continues to hold the western imagination as the supreme embodiment of flow in human settlement. Indeed, in the second volume of The Stones of Venice (1853), John Ruskin (1819-1900) stresses the extremely narrow margins of tidal flux that made the city possible; if the tide been a little stronger, or the water channels deeper, it would have become just another walled city. It is the city's openness to flow and penetration that inform its erotic power. This essay focuses on Ruskin's passionately engaged ‘‘watching'' of Venice's stones, exploring how these themes of flux and flow inform his inimitable visio