In fact, the illustrations to this volume of Stones, which appeared in 1853, are a good deal richer in their variety: far from being simply ‘all in line engraving’, they comprise two prints of stonework at the Cathedral of Murano which featured a novel colour process, and two engravings taken directly from daguerreotypes, all of the former being signed by the engraver James Charles Armytage, not to mention a large number of Ruskin’s woodcuts after his own designs. Among the extracts from many reviews of the work cited by his publisher, only the Spectator signalled any special interest, noting in respect of volume two of the work: ‘The plates in this volume are all in line engraving, most minutely designed, and delicately executed’.
It appears that this view of the relative unimportance of John Ruskin’s illustrations may have been widely shared at the time. But the conclusion was not positive: ‘even these lose much of their value in our estimation from the impossibility of going hand in hand with the author in the broader fields of criticism, in which they are but the stray flowers’. This anonymous writer conceded that ‘some of the critical remarks upon these objects, and upon the smaller points of formative beauty, are ingenious and discriminative, and such as we can often concur with’.
At the close of a lengthy account of the three volumes of The Stones of Venice, published in successive editions of the Illustrated London News in 1853, the reviewer made a belated acknowledgement: ‘We must add, in conclusion, that the work abounds in engraved illustrations of decorative features in Venetian architecture, which in themselves are highly interesting’.