Vanity Fair Caricature of John Ruskin

Adriano Cecioni's chromolithograph, plate No. 172 in the Men of the Day series, presents the art critic and social reformer John Ruskin in strict profile, his head—dominated by a long, prominent nose and heavy brow—enlarged relative to his slight, dark-coated body, a device Cecioni used to literalise intellectual pretension. Ruskin stands with hands loosely clasped behind him, gaze lifted, posture suggesting lofty abstraction. The caption, "The realization of the Ideal," skewers his reputation for grand aesthetic theory that many found impractical or self-congratulatory.