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.