Ruskin e la rappresentazione del sublime

This article presents the representation of the concept of beautiful and sublime through the reading of the works by John Ruskin. Ruskin defines as sublime everything that elevates the mind through the contemplation of a magnificence capable of creating sensations of wonder at the limit of disorientation and fear. The sublime would therefore not be distinct from beauty but is configured as its highest and deepest manifestation. The concept of the sublime is also linked to the concept of the picturesque, fundamental for the formulation of Ruskin‘s thought on the conservation of ancient architecture and for the affirmation of aesthetic categories in the artistic and more generally cultural imagination not only of the time but also of contemporaneity.