Quarto. 124pp. With two woodcut illustrated plates depicting the interior of the Arena Chapel at Padua and the Baptism of Christ respectively. Contemporary dark green gilt-tooled half-morocco, marbled paper boards. Very lightly rubbed. Marbled endpapers. Occasional light staining to text.

The first edition of English art critic John Ruskin's (1819-1900) examination of Giotto's painted Arena Chapel, Padua, first published by the Arundel Society between 1853 and 1860. An example of Ruskin's ekphrastic writing, the volume sought to provide readers with the closest possible experience to viewing Giotto's iconic frescoes for themselves. Ruskin, who attributed to Giotto a cohesive excellence uncommon for the time, claimed that 'The entire system of possible Christian Art is founded on the principles established by Giotto in Florence, he receiving them from the Attic Greeks though Cimabue, the last of their disciples, and engrafting them on the existing art of the Etruscans, the race from which both his master and he were descended.'