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Describing visual art in words
"The presence that thus rose so strangely beside the waters, is expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years men had come to desire. Hers is the head upon which all 'the ends of the world are come', and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has passed! All the thoughts and experiences of the world have been etched and moulded there, in that which they have of power to refine and make expressive the outward form, the animalism of Greece, the lust of Rome, the reverie of the middle age with its spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of the Pagan world, the sins of the Borgias. She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants: and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands. The fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten thousand experiences, is an old one; and modern thought has conceived the idea of humanity as wrought upon by, and summing up in itself, all modes of thought and life. Certainly, Lady Lisa might stand as the embodiment of the old fancy, the symbol of the modern idea." The Mona Lisa described by Walter Pater
The word ekphrasis, or ecphrasis, comes from the Greek for the written description of a work of art produced as a rhetorical or literary exercise,[1] often used in the adjectival form ekphrastic. It is a vivid, often dramatic, verbal description of a visual work of art, either real or imagined. Thus, "an ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art."[2] In ancient times, it might refer more broadly to a description of any thing, person, or experience. The word comes from the Greek ἐκ ek and φράσις phrásis, 'out' and 'speak' respectively, and the verb ἐκφράζειν ekphrázein, 'to proclaim or call an inanimate object by name'.
The works of art described or evoked, may be real or imagined; and this may be difficult to discern. Ancient ekphrastic writing can be useful evidence for art historians, especially for paintings, as virtually no original Greco-Roman examples survive.
Ekphrasis has been considered generally to be a rhetorical device in which one medium of art tries to relate to another medium by defining and describing its essence and form, and in doing so, relate more directly to the audience, through its illuminative liveliness.
A descriptive work of prose or poetry, a film, or even a photograph may highlight through its rhetorical vividness what is happening or what is shown. For example, in the visual arts, it may enhance the original art and so take on a life of its own through its brilliant description. One example is a painting of a sculpture: the painting is "telling the story of" the sculpture, and so becoming a storyteller, as well as a story (work of art) itself. Virtually any type of artistic medium may be the actor of or subject of ekphrasis. Although, for example, it may not be possible to make an accurate sculpture of a book to retell the story in an authentic way, it is the spirit of the book that may be conveyed by virtually any medium and thereby enhance the artistic impact of the original book through synergy.
^The Chambers Dictionary, Chambers Harrap, Edinburgh 1993 ISBN 0-550-10255-8
^The Poetry Foundation, Glossary Terms: Ekphrasis (accessed 27 April 2015)
at a third remove ekphrasis of a bed in another art form is at a fourth remove In Plato's Phaedrus, Socrates talks about ekphrasis to Phaedrus, saying:...
Peletier du Mans' work, l'Art poétique, whereas ekphrasis has been known since Greek antiquity. The ekphrasis is evoked by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in...
perform it with clarity, conciseness, and floridity. When asked to use ekphrasis to describe a person, place, thing, or time, students were obliged to...
description of the shield is the first known example of ekphrasis in ancient Greek poetry; ekphrasis is a rhetorical figure in which a detailed (textual)...
AQA. 14 July 2023. Regis, Amber K. (2 April 2020). "Interpreting Emily: Ekphrasis and Allusion in Charlotte Brontë's 'Editor's Preface' to Wuthering Heights"...
Pictured ekphrasis is one aspect of the fusion of text and picture that emerge in the hybrid novel. Here, pictured ekphrasis refers to ekphrasis that is...
within the epic's narrative represents one of the most famous instances of ekphrasis in extant Roman literature. In Book VIII of the Aeneid, Virgil describes...
Eerdmans Publishing, pp. 36–39 Leach, Eleanor Winsor (January 1974), "Ekphrasis and the Theme of Artistic Failure in Ovid's Metamorphoses", Ramus, 3 (2)...
Publicaties. 30 (1/2): 4–18. JSTOR 3780948. "Ten of the best: examples of ekphrasis". the Guardian. 14 November 2009. Retrieved 17 November 2022. "De val...
Hugh G. Evelyn-White, 1914. The Shield of Achilles and the Poetics of Ekphrasis, Andrew Sprague Becker, Rowman & Littlefield, 1995, p. 148. Professor...
Margolick, Strange Fruit, pp. 31–32. Perry, Samuel (2012). ""Strange Fruit," Ekphrasis, and the Lynching Scene". Rhetoric Society Quarterly. 43 (5): 449–474...
doi:10.1017/S006867350000523X. Leach, Eleanor Winsor (January 1974). "Ekphrasis and the Theme of Artistic Failure in Ovid's Metamorphoses". Ramus. 3 (2):...
of Kos's lost masterpiece Aphrodite Anadyomene based on the literary ekphrasis of it preserved by Cicero and Pliny the Elder. Artists also drew inspiration...
Calumny of Apelles by Sandro Botticelli, based on a description of a painting by the Greek painter Apelles of Kos found in Lucian's ekphrasis On Calumny...
typically as vivid descriptions and dramatizations; this genre is known as ekphrasis. In addition to numerous individual poems inspired by Hopper, several...
Horses of the Sahara.". Description in Classical Arabic Poetry: Waṣf, Ekphrasis, and Interarts. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-12922-1. Train, Amy (December 2006)...
7th century. Seven poems by John have survived: an ekphrasis and six Anacreontic verses. The ekphrasis, Tabula Mundi (Table of the World), contains 703...
published in 1955. It is Auden's response to the detailed description, or ekphrasis, of the shield borne by the hero Achilles in Homer's epic poem the Iliad...
(Out of Print in 2010) Scott, Grant F. (1994). The Sculpted Word: Keats, Ekphrasis, and the Visual Arts. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England. ISBN 0-87451-679-X...
ISBN 978-2-7577-0419-6. Korolija Fontana-Giusti, Gordana. (2015) 'Transgression and Ekphrasis in Le Corbusier's Journey to the East' in Transgression: Towards the Expanded...
Genevievis)'" (2016) "All the Colors You Thought Were Kings" (2016) "Ekphrasis" (2016) "Ruin Marble" (2017) "The Hydraulic Emperor" (2018) "Object-Oriented"...
Castelli, Elizabeth A. (July 15, 2000). "Chapter 39: Asterius of Amasea,Ekphrasis on the Holy Martyr Euphemia". In Valantasis, Richard (ed.). Religions...
translators and servants; around 350 bishops attended the Council in all. In an ekphrasis in his eleventh sermon, Asterius of Amasea described an icon in the church...
practice of painting were components in a gentlemanly education. The ekphrasis was a literary form consisting of a description of a work of art, and...
teachers discussing classical works. He employs a common rhetorical trope, ekphrasis, using images on the walls or floors of Greco-Roman homes, and in the...
more sensitive exploration of warfare. Ode on a Grecian Urn, while an ekphrasis, also functions as an ode to the artistic beauty the narrator observes...
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