ABSTRACT
George Steiner argues that Ruskin's readings of Turner are the finest repre sentations of the spiritual power of art in the English language. He observes that Ruskin's 'chronicles' of visual shock, experienced as he stood before these canvases, dramatize the 'dialogue between an inrush of envisioned meaning' and the 'energized receptivity' of the spectator.1 This is equally true of a number of Ruskin's interpretations of Veronese. The most pro minent of these narratives are those which describe his encounter with the Presentation of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon (Fig. 7.1) in 1858 and the sub sequent shift in his aesthetic and religious beliefs. Ruskin presented this encounter as a turning point in his life, a moment of 'unconversion' when he put aside his Protestant beliefs 'to be debated of no more' (35.496). Some biographers have taken this at face value. John Rosenberg, for example, de scribes how Ruskin 'calmly shed the Evangelicalism' of his early creative life as he looked at The Queen of Sheba.2 Yet, as Tim Hilton observes, the turning points identified by Ruskin himself 'were often overprecise'.3 In the years before this change the 'sublime' character of Veronese's paintings was already highly valued by Ruskin. In Modern Painters IV (1856) he was already describing the artist as a prophet. In this chapter I will give an account of Ruskin's appreciation of Veronese over a longer time-span, in order to argue that the 'unconversion' of 1858 is actually more complex than Ruskin himself suggests.
