The August 1872 issue of Fors Clavigera opens with a beautifully crisp frontispiece captioned, all in one long line, ‘Part of the Chapel of St. Mary of the Thorn, PISA, as it was 27 years ago.’ Centered directly below the line and completing the caption in almost pained brevity stand the words: ‘Now in Ruins.’ Drawing and caption are emblems of what is to come in the body of ‘Benediction,’ the most remarkable of the ninety-six public letters that comprise Fors Clavigera.

Ruskin's drawing of the chapel, done in his mid-twenties, depicts a Gothic idyll in stone, a delicate filigree of pinnacles and sculptured arcades, rosewindows and shaded gables all bathed in brilliant morning light. Frontispiece, caption, and ensuing text trace a continuous arc from felicity to enraged despair, the letter ending as Ruskin stares in incredulous horror while a Pisan stonemason sets to work demolishing the chapel. ‘Now in Ruins’ is Ruskin's summary judgment upon the fall of a Gothic paradise and the rise in its stead of the aggressively secular, industrialized Europe he detested. But the caption also carries a more private significance. For the long course of years between Ruskin's first drawing the chapel and witnessing its destruction1 also saw the wreckage of his own hopes of ever gaining mastery over his disordered life. His books were becoming increasingly fragmentary and idiosyncratic.