“ Art has no longer anything but skin upon its bones. ”
Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831). copy citation
| Author | Victor Hugo |
|---|---|
| Source | The Hunchback of Notre-Dame |
| Topic | art skin |
| Date | 1831 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | Translation by Isabel F. Hapgood in 1888 |
| Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2610/2610-h/2610-h.htm |
Context
“Here, finally, is Louis XV., with chiccory leaves and vermicelli, and all the warts, and all the fungi, which disfigure that decrepit, toothless, and coquettish old architecture. From François II. to Louis XV., the evil has increased in geometrical progression. Art has no longer anything but skin upon its bones. It is miserably perishing.
Meanwhile what becomes of printing? All the life which is leaving architecture comes to it. In proportion as architecture ebbs, printing swells and grows. That capital of forces which human thought had been expending in edifices, it henceforth expends in books.”
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