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Ekphrasis and the Generation of Images

Author(s): David Rosand
Source: Arion, Third Series, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Winter, 1990), pp. 61-105
Published by: Trustees of Boston University
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Ekphrasis and the Generation
of Images
DAVID ROSAND
To the memory
of Rudolf Wittkower
images that yet
Those
Fresh
images beget,
That
dolphin-torn,
-W.B.
that gong-tormented
sea.
Yeats
l^KPHRASIS,
originally the Greek rhetorical exer
and
has long been understood
cise of evocative description,
as
narrower
a
sense:
in
the
of
literary representation
practiced
isHomer's
visual art. Its earliest, and most famous, monument
universe inwhich
lively description of the shield of Achilles?a
earth convinces by its very darkness, although
the ploughed
of gold: "awonder of the artist's craft" (Fitzgerald trans.).
Always aware of its conceitful purpose, ekphrasis sets the arts
in friendly and mutually
the poet's task
supportive competition:
the favor
is to give life to a twice-fictive
image. But, historically,
is returned. The exchange is reciprocal, as the text in turn finds
new reality through visualization
by the painter. The history
art can be seen as a cycle of such exchange,
the
of Western
?
intercalation of texts and pictures through the helix of time
image.
image begetting
as it were, of the
That cycle is my topic: the re-creation,
am
I
in the role
interested
shield of Achilles.1 More
specifically,
of ekphrasis at a particular period in the history of art: its
function in the shaping of the pictorial culture of the Renais
in the course of that culture may be
sance.2 Two moments
made
isolated,
each initiating
a distinct
phase
in the cycle.
in February
1989 in a series on Renaissance
paper was a lecture delivered
Literature
and the Arts sponsored by the University
Professors
Program, Boston
to inaugurate
in Comparative
in
the graduate
Studies
program
University,
This
Literature
and the Arts. An
earlier
on Poetics, "The Poetics

Colloquium
of Visual Art," Columbia
University,
version was
read at the Tenth
of Ekphrasis:
November
The Literary
1986.
International
Representation

62
EKPHRASISAND THE GENERATION OF IMAGES

I
can be quite precise about the first moment:

it occurs in
Leon
De Pict
Battista
with
the
of
Alberti's
1435,
composition
tract
humanist
ura, that remarkable and quite unprecedented
on a mechanical
art. De Pictura is structured on the model of
We
the ancient rhetorical treatise, and it is just this appropriation

for a discussion
of the art of
of the classical literary model
serves
to
to
itself.3
that
ennoble
the
subject
Transposing
painting
of
the
classical
Alberti
divisions
poesis, poema, poeta,
painting
(elementa),
develops his theme in three parts: the rudiments
(ars), and the painter (artifex).4 Book 1, essentially
painting
offers the earliest account of the newly developed
mathematical,
construction,
system of perspective
grounding pictorial repre
sentation in geometry and thereby attesting to the intellectual
status of painting, as a rational activity of the mind. Book 2
to the figurai, from the perspec
moves from the mathematical
tive schema that is the foundation of spatial illusion in a picture,
through the rendering of bodies, to the elements that constitute
its affective fiction, its historia. Alberti's first two books, respec
in tone, together articulate two
tively Euclidean and Ciceronian
for any definition of Renais
considered axiomatic
discourses
sance painting: mathematically
based perspective and the classi
imitation of natural form.
cally controlled
Book 3 is devoted to the painter, whose goal should be to
achieve praise and fame rather than wealth
through his work.5
the painter's art as liberal rather than
Having thus distinguished
Alberti proceeds to urge his association with the
mechanical,
literati. The painter should be morally upright and learned in
the liberal arts, which will offer him the thematic substance of
his art. Literary knowledge,
acquired from poets and orators,
will assist him in composing historiae. And it is the historia that
is the true test of the painter.
Declaring on several occasions that the historia is "the great
work of the painter," Alberti adds that "the great virtue of this
consists primarily in its invention. Indeed, invention is such that
even by itself and without painting it can give pleasure."6 It is,
in his discussion
of the historia that Alberti
understandably,
has most direct recourse to the rhetorical terms of antiquity.7
runs through his text as the essential
in particular,
Inventio,
the painter as a creative
virtue, the quality that distinguishes

David Rosand
63
Inventio here exists effectively on the level of idea, beyond

It
of pictorial?that
the contingency
is, material ?realization.
involves the "what" rather than the "how" of representation.
an historia, of
Invention is the imaginative act of conceiving
to
thematic
be
material
finding appropriate
represented, and it
is the reason that painters should be literate and companions of
and inventio belong to the realm of literary
literati. Historia
mind.
discourse.
To demonstrate
without
painting,
the inherent
Alberti
offers
interest of a pictorial invention

the first of two examples:
that Lucian gives of Calumny painted by

The description
our
excites
admiration when we read it. I do not
Apelles
think it is inappropriate to tell it here, so that painters may
be advised of the need to take care in creating inventions
of this kind (153).

then proceeds to describe the long-lost painting by the most
celebrated painter of antiquity, a painting he, of course, knew
in Lucian's De Calumnia ? or,
its description
only through
more precisely, through Guarino's Latin translation of Lucian's
seizes the imagination
"If this 'historia'
when
ekphrasis.
He
in words,"
he concludes,
"how much beauty and
it
in
think
the
do
actual painting of that
you
presented
pleasure
excellent artist?" With a casualness bordering on the disingenu
ous, Alberti has sounded perhaps the most resonant note of his
entire treatise, a programmatic
call to painting that?as much
as the commensurability
of perspective,
classical figurai propor
? must be counted central
or
in
the
orders
architecture
tions,
to any concept of the Renaissance
in art.
described
his ekphrasis of the "Calumny of Apelles"

(to
Following
which we shall return), Alberti presents another, of the Three
Graces:
shall we say too about those three young sisters,

and Thalia? The
whom Hesiod
called Egle, Euphronesis,
in loose transparent
ancients represented
them dressed
robes, with
they
smiling faces and hands intertwined;
to signify liberality, for one of the sisters
thereby wished
gives, another receives and the third returns the favour, all
of which degrees should be present in every act of liberality.
What

64
You can appreciate how inventions of this kind bring great

repute to the artist. I therefore advise the studious painter
to make himself familiar with poets and orators and other
men of letters, for he will not only obtain excellent orna
ments from such learned minds, but he will also be assisted
in painting may gain him
in those very inventions which
the greatest praise. The eminent painter Phidias used to
say that he had learned from Homer how best to represent
the majesty of Jupiter. I believe that we too may be richer
and better painters from reading our poets, provided
[he
cannot help adding] we are more
to financial gain (1154).
attentive
to learning than
Ekphrasis, practiced with particular flourish through Byzan

tine literary tradition, had been an important part of the early
and his school, in
humanists'
response to painting. Guarino
Baxandall has reminded us), had espe
(asMichael
particular
in the detailed variety of paintings,
cially delighted
pictorial
the occasion
for literary performance,
copiousness
providing
the display of rhetorical prowess.8 The rich variety of a painting,
more concentratedly
abundant than Nature's
own, proved an
to
irresistible challenge
the humanists'
skills. The
descriptive
painter who appealed to them most directly was Pisanello,
a pictorial
to
whose
surrogate
tapestried
display provided
Nature
led the way. With
himself
(fig. 1). Guarino
requisite
to his
rhetorical modesty,
his own gifts unequal
protesting
as
Veronese
he
celebrated
his
the
rival
of
subject,
compatriot
Nature,
. . .whether
you are depicting birds or beasts, perilous

swear we saw the spray
straits and calm seas; we would
roar.
I put out a hand to
gleaming and hear the breakers
wipe the sweat from the brow of the labouring peasant;
we seem to hear the whinny
of a war horse and tremble
at the blare of trumpets. When you paint a nocturnal scene
flit about and not one of the birds
you make the night-birds
of the day is to be seen; you pick out the stars, the moon's
scene
sphere, the sunless darkness. If you paint a winter
everything bristles with frost and the leafless trees grate in
If you set the action in spring, varied flowers
the wind.
the old brilliance returns to
smile in the green meadows,

David Rosand
the trees, and hills bloom;
songs of birds.9
here
the air quivers with
65
the
in this
There
is, of course, something
self-congratulatory
inventory of synaesthetic sensibility. The painter's art impresses
it inspires response
by its mimetic miracle, but, being mimetic,
seem
to
"We
hear"
its
surface.
becomes,
imaginatively,
beyond
"we hear." Through all the formulae we are invited to shiver
But
leafless trees," to enjoy "the green meadows."
to
continue
and
condition
remain,
they
perception
and response. Guarino's example was followed by many others.
in
Tito Vespasiano
Strozzi, for example, outdoing his master
one
in
addresses
the
poem:
painter
imagined detail,
with
"the
the formulae
How
shall I tell of the living birds or gliding rivers, the
seas with their shores? I seem to hear the roaring waves
there, and the scaly tribe cleave the blue water. Prating
runnel; you make boars lurk
frogs croak beneath muddy
in the valley and bears on the mountain.
You wrap soft
and
round
the
clear
green grass mingles
verges
springs,
in
with fragrant flowers. We see two nymphs wandering
a
on
one
with
the shady woods,
her shoulder,
hunting-net
the other bearing spears, and in another part baying dogs
flushing she-goats from their dens and snapping their sav
age jaws. Yonder the swift hound is intent on the hare's
here the rearing horse neighs and champs at
destruction;
its bit.10
in imaginary gardens.
to the collective work (and reputation) of Pisa
Responding
these ekphraseis
nello rather than to any individual painting,
in
tradition
of
the
participate
long
descriptive response to picto
Real
toads
they celebrate and perpetuate

Programmatically,
the fame of the painter. In fulfilling that function, however,
they cannot help but displace him and his art. In the sibling
rivalry between the arts, the fame of the painter echoes through
the centuries thanks to the writer ?as Ariosto was to put it so
bluntly, "merc? degli scrittori." From the painter's side, we
rial material.
the pretense,
indeed,
might protest this aesthetic parasitism,
these texts that
of these enthusiastic
ekphraseis,
deception
the effects of painting,
substituting
exploit and appropriate

66
for their subject. But that, we know, had been the

fate of the visual arts ever since Homer fancied himself
themselves
cultural
a
sculptor.
Michael
Baxandall has very elegantly shown just how Alberti

from his humanist colleagues,
how he developed
the
conventional values of rhetoric into a more systematic response
differed
to and program for painting,

looking beyond the descriptive
detail and creating, in effect, the very notion of pictorial compo
sition.11 But Alberti hardly abandoned
the ekphrastic mode.
it
Rather, he inflected it so that, no longer merely responsive,
new
a
new
as
to
and
relevance
Profunction.
painters
acquired
as retrospective,
ekphrasis became a critical link in the
artistic
chain
of
great
being; it became both the historical record
in painting and the source of future
of past accomplishment
Instead of indulging in a verbal tapestry to match
achievement.
well
the visual riches of International Gothic

style, Alberti recalled
the interpretive ambitions of the ekphrastic traditions of antiq
intellect as well as sense. Beyond
uity, intending to challenge
their descriptive function, Alberti's ekphraseis were prescriptive
as well, and prescriptive
in a double sense: ethical and aesthetic.
In the latter sense, in particular, he offered them as bridges
across time, across the Middle
Ages, as exempla
linking the
a
classical
Renaissance
of
and
that he
antiquity
pictorial
glory
was effectively inventing. Only through such literary accounts
were the monuments
of ancient painting preserved; only their
invenzioni survived the ravages of time.
The verbal representations
of the "Calumny of Apelles" and
the Three Graces are explicitly offered as models,
inventions
the contemporary painter,
for historiae. From these descriptions
intended reader, is invited to reconstruct images from
Alberti's
the classical past. It is indeed a grand invitation: to join Alberti
in the project of creating nothing less than the full Renaissance
of painting. Itwas an invitation that could not be immediately
accepted, however.
The first two parts of Alberti's curriculum, mathematically
in easy
existed
and rhetorical naturalism,
based perspective
in
with the pictorial culture that Alberti discovered
on his return from the family exile in 1434. Brunel
had brought perspec
and Masaccio
leschi, Ghiberti, Donatello,
tive construction
under rigorous control in practice. In figurai
they had recovered the com
design as well as in architecture,
harmony
Florence

David Rosand
67
and they had civilized the

of classical proportion,
mensurability
Christian pathos of late Gothic
imagery with the gravitas of
to
the
"how" of representation,
classical form. With
regard
then, Alberti might be said to have articulated the achievements
of contemporary
practice. His recommendations
regarding the
"what" of representation, on the other hand, however culturally
plausible they may appear to us in historical retrospect, were
radically novel, advanced in every sense.
"Di nuovo
Alberti was building anew an art of painting:
fabrichiamo un'arte di pittura" (1?26), as he put it in his Italian
version, Delia Pittura, the text that was addressed explicitly to
in mind
the artists of Florence. He had a program
for the
one that would
build upon the
further reform of painting,
foundations provided by the heroic generation of the first quar
ter of the Quattrocento.
With critical foresight and real imagi
in their fullest
he understood
the
nation,
significance
and Masaccio
had achieved, and
implications of what Donatello
to see that potential
he was determined
realized. It is that
that animates book 3 of his treatise and gives it
its special proleptic resonance.
individual elements
that constitute
Book 2, in which
the
historia are discussed, offers a repertory of expressive motifs
inspired by antiquity. Each becomes the occasion for and illus
tration of a larger point of principle ?as the description of the
dead Meleager
(an historia, Alberti notes, much praised in
Rome) initiates a discourse on the decorum of representation
(f 37). And even without explicit reference, we intuit the ancient
models behind his further comments on the expressive move
ment of inanimate things, "of hair and manes and branches and
determination
leaves and clothing"

(1?45). The flow of hair and draperies
(which Aby Warburg was to characterize famously as "bewegtes
to the movements
of the
Beiwerk") gives graphic articulation
those established gestures of passion
(War
body, sustaining
more
still
famous
that
had
Alberti
"Pathosformeln")
burg's
on
seen
ancient
Roman
observed
and
had
certainly
sarcophagi
to new purpose in the work of Donatello.12 Within
construction,
setting of perspective
against the
measured grid of the plan and the proportionality
of its forms,
the historia, after all, was expected to move the passions of the
animated
the controlled
beholder. Such volatility was not to be found in the Giottesque

nor would it be in the work of the painter
gravity of Masaccio,

68
who is so often cited as the ideally Albertian master, Piero della

Francesca. Rather, Alberti's
call for dramatic movement,
for
to
correlatives
human
work
the
of
suggests
graphic
expression,
a painter like Castagno or, still more relevant, of artists of the
next generation, Antonio
Botticelli,
Pollaiuolo,
and, beyond
in northern Italy, Mantegna.
Florence,
From the individual elements and motifs of book 2, Alberti
in book 3 to embrace the full historia,
expands the discussion
as
immediate
the two ekphraseis. His selection
models
offering
casual nor arbitrary. The topics, in fact, are highly
each presents a particular challenge and opportu
professional;
to
the modern painter. First, the "description
that Lucian
nity
is neither
gives of Calumny
painted
by Apelles":
In the painting there was a man with enormous ears stick

ing out, attended on each side by two women,
Ignorance
and Suspicion; from one side Calumny was approaching
in
but [one] whose
the form of an attractive woman,
face
seemed too well versed in cunning, and she was holding
in her left hand a lighted torch, while with her right she was
dragging by the hair a youth with his arms outstretched
towards heaven. Leading her was another man, pale, ugly
and fierce to look upon, whom you would rightly compare
to those exhausted by long service in the field. They identi
fied him correctly as Envy. There are two other women
attendant on Calumny and busy arranging their mistress's
dress; they are Treachery and Deceit. Behind them comes
clad inmourning
and rending her hair, and in
Repentance
her train chaste and modest Truth (1153).
is more than just an elaborate
"Calumny of Apelles"
with
dramatis
alVantica
personae of colorful per
morality play
It illustrates amajor theme of Alberti's third book:
sonifications.
The
of the painter. And here is the ethical force of the

own description
Lucian's
of Apelles'
painting,
ekphrasis.
of the vice that was his
intended to introduce the embodiment
topic, was prefaced by an account of the event that inspired the
original picture. Apelles, having been falsely accused by another
in Egypt, had
artist of sedition against Ptolemy IV Philopator
to death. The celebrated painter was exoner
been condemned
the honor
ated only at the last moment
by late testimony.
Justice prevailed,

David Rosand
69
in his allegorical
but Apelles
recorded the bitter experience
a
to
the
the
lesson
tableau,
origins and effective
king, showing
ness of Calumny
in the world?but
also the eventual triumph
of Truth.13 Lucian's account added a special kind of biographical
substance to the many anecdotes about Apelles to be gathered
from the pages of Pliny's Natural History. Above all, however,
it thrust the painter into the public world as a victim of envy,
a situation not likely to go unappreciated
in the intensely com
the artistic world ?of early Renais
petitive world ?especially
sance Florence and which would play an increasingly significant
role
in the adoption
of the "Calumny
of Apelles"
by
later
artists.14
Alberti, we recall, concludes his Lucianic ekphrasis with a

"If this 'historia' seizes the imagination
rhetorical question:
in words, how much beauty and pleasure do
when described
in the actual painting of that excellent
you think it presented
artist?" Implicit in the question, of course, is the invitation to
the modern painter to try his hand at realizing this invenzione,
to compete with the greatest of the ancient Greek painters by
re-creating his lost masterpiece.
Specially privileged by Alexan
der the Great, Apelles emerged as the avatar of the painter, the
model for the new artist of the Renaissance. No higher praise
could be accorded a painter than the title of the "new Apelles,"
a tag inevitable in humanist praise and that was to become well
worn indeed by the end of the Renaissance
tradition, but one
that must have carried a very special charge at the beginning.15
in motivation,
the "Calumny of Apel
Profoundly professional
les" is Alberti's choice for artists.
In realizing Alberti's program, toward the end of the fifteenth
century, artists such as Botticelli and Mantegna
responded to
that professional
Botticelli's
challenge.16
Calumny
(fig. 2), in
in full
reconstitutes
the lost painting by Apelles
particular,
the
tab
measure;
requisite allegorical
beyond reconstructing
a
of
further
it
dimension
adds
leau,
pictorial accompaniment.
in a basilica alVantica ?
Botticelli sets the action, appropriately,
traditional site of judgment ?and
he fills it with a sculptural
detail. Impressively catholic in thematic
includes heroic figures from pagan,
decoration
Christian
antiquity, as well as political heroes of
In
addition to that range, the reliefs add
vintage.
on the base of
resonance ?including,
still further mythological
of
this
variety,
Jewish, and
more recent
program
insistent

70
the throne of the asinine judge, a family of centaurs: the subject

of an ancient ekphrasis of a painting by Zeuxis,
described by
Lucian and, without
the
Philostratus
Elder.17 As
attribution, by
a program, not surprisingly, the complex has defied definitive
is clearly significant from our point of view,
decoding. What
is that Botticelli has embellished
the original Lucianic
ornaments
with
further
"excellent
from . . . learned
ekphrasis
as
Alberti
would
have
(1154), and has given
minds,"
recognized
back to those learned minds a painting that, in turn, requires
It is an image that, in the detail of its own
interpretation.
ekphrastic insets, demands to be read. A phase of the cycle has
however,
been completed.
is not actually
Alberti's second ekphrasis, the Three Graces,
nomination
of
based on a particular work. Evoking Hesiod's
the sisters, Alberti (154) offers a description of how they were
in antiquity, a general reference but with enough
represented
to satisfy his intention. Here, too, the subject carries its
for the choreography
of the three represents
ethical meaning,
that signifies liberality.18
the action of giving and receiving
On one level, at least, we can appreciate the appeal (however
to the dedicatee of De Pictura.
indirect) of this interpretation
detail
of Mantua
Alberti's
brief letter to Gianfrancesco
Gonzaga
sounds the familiar note of the humanist in search of patronage.
Indeed, it is the very epitome of that situation, concluding with
an unashamedly
of himself:
direct presentation
could know my character and learning, and all my
qualities best, if you arranged for me to join you, as I indeed
desire. And I shall believe my work has not displeased you,
if you decide to enroll me as a devoted member
among
your servants and to regard me as not one of the least.
You
In the context of Delia Pittura, that is, of Alberti's own Italian

version of his book with its address to the painter, the ekphrasis
invokes a number of professional
of the Three Graces
topoi.
involved
One, the paragone between painting and sculpture,
the presentation of multiple views of the figure. Another, closer
to our concern,
involves the draperies that reveal the figure
In Alberti's
their loose
conceal.
description,
they ostensibly
e
vesta
scinta
ben
la
or,
monda";
("con
transparent garments
in his Latin, "soluta et perlucida veste ornatas") were surely

David Rosand
intended as a challenge
had celebrated
35.58)
women
ji
to the painter. Pliny (Historia Naturalis,

as the first to have painted
Polygnotus
with transparent garments ("muliere tralucida veste"),

and the depiction of draperies that reveal (the female figure),
in sculpture as well as painting, was to become a favorite Renais
sance topos, a dimostrazione
delVarte.19 In this, too, Alberti's
be
would
program
eventually
fully realized. And again, it is
takes up the challenge ? nearly
Botticelli who most prominently
two generations
later (fig. 3).20
or not Delia Pittura inspired new attention to the
Whether
nude body and classical statuary, it is clear that its text gave
voice to concerns that were central to Quattrocento
painters
and pictorial culture. Alberti learned much from the Florentine
artists he so admired, and he learned as much from his study
with Brunelleschi
and with Dona
of ancient art. Responding,
he understood
the
tello, to the lessons of Roman antiquities,
larger implications of the revival of classical form, and that
informed the broad scope of the program he
understanding
in
It enabled him to look beyond the accom
his
book.
presented
pre
plishments of his own generation and anticipate ?indeed,
next.
scribe?the
of
the
goals
Ut pictura poesis: in defining the possibilities of painting and
the aspirations of the painter, Alberti
introduced the ancient
simile
conceptually,
if not
literally
into
the
new
age's
con
sciousness. As important, he inflected it to read ut pictor poeta.

the achievement,
ambition, and fame of the painter
Harnessing
to those of the literati, he established a new standard of valua
tion and new goals for art. Taking seriously, on a professional,
studio level, what had been essentially rhetorical in his ancient
models
and their modern
imitations, Alberti
inaugurated the
critical dialectic between word and picture that was to deter
mine attitudes toward art for the next three centuries and more.
And itwas the notion and practice of ekphrasis on which this
aspect of his program
pivoted.21
II
Nearly a century after Alberti wrote De Pictura, the topic of
his third book inspired another Renaissance
text, of a different
order but still very much on painting and the painter. Represent

72
stanzas of canto 33 of the

ing the poet's brief, the opening
resume the discourse
Furioso
Orlando
initiated by Alberti,
vision
the
of
historical
of Renaissance
his
mechanics
reaffirming
culture. Ariosto
calls the Plinian
roll of ancient painters?Tima

goras, Parrhasius, Polygnotus,
Protogenes, Timanthes, Apollo
dorus, and, above all, Apelles ?and declares that they will be
so long as men read and write; the painter's fame
remembered
will live, that is, by grace of writers
("merc? degli scrittori").
Ariosto also turns us to Ferrara in the first decades of the
in the larger cycle
sixteenth century and to the second moment
in Renaissance
intervention
of ekphrastic
culture. The poet
as
a
court
center
himself established the Este
of ekphrastic
major
a web of referential conceit, his romantic
aesthetics. Weaving
of the various para
epic exploits and exhausts the possibilities
and
and sculpture,
poetry,
painting
goni?between
painting
Art
Nature.
It plays the
and
and
between
poetry,
sculpture
game of medium exchange with cunning mastery and delicious
sleight of hand.22
Out of this same center came a set of pictures that initiates
that second phase in the cycle: the series intended to decorate
I d'Est? in the castle of Ferrara. This
the camerino of Alfonso
seems to have begun with the canvas Giovanni
Bellini com
?
? and which Titian was
in
1514
subsequently to modify
pleted
a Feast of the Gods based on Ovid's Fasti.23 The series was to
have included pictures by Fra Bartolommeo
and by Raphael,
but these never took their places in the decorative program of
the room. Instead, Bellini's canvas was joined by another by the
and three painted by
Ferrarese court painter, Dosso Dossi,
Titian.24
to
Our concern is with Titian. The pictures he contributed
camerino were all realizations of ancient ekphraseis.
Alfonso's
His Bacchus and Ariadne (fig. 4), although drawing upon Ovid
the scene embroidered
ian texts as well, represents essentially
on the coverlet
of the marriage
bed of Peleus and Thetis
in Carmina 64.25 The other two, a cele
described by Catullus
bration of Cupids (fig. 5) and a Bacchanal of the Andrians
(fig.
6) reconstruct images from the Imagines (Eikones) of Philostra
tus the Elder, a series of ekphraseis of paintings purportedly
a Greek villa outside Naples
in the third century
decorating
A.D. ?paintings,
significantly,
without
attribution.26

David Rosand
73
:;:-*&:
-:;:?/:
"?O?Si????????
1. Pisanello, The Vision of St. Eustace. Reproduced by permission

of the National Gallery, London.

74
2. Botticelli, The Calumny of Apelles. Reproduced

of the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.
by permission

David Rosand
>?,
i
??ms
3. Botticelli, La Primavera. Reproduced by permission of the

Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

75
76
4.
Titian,
National
Bacchus
Gallery,
and Ariadne.
Reproduced
by permission
of
London.

the
David Rosand
yi/
:
4^Jp-s?!
5. Titian, Cupids. Reproduced by permission of theMuseo

Prado,
del
Madrid.

77
78
IF:
...S?
6. Titian, The And?ans.

del Prado, Madrid.
/<*
Reproduced by permission of theMuseo

David Rosand
79
pjif^r*
7. Fra Bartolommeo, The Worship of Venus. Reproduced by

permission of the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi,
Florence.

8o
PS!
<Wm
8. Rubens, Cupids (afterTitian). Reproduced by permission of the

Nationalmuseum,
Stockholm.

David Rosand
mmwmm
Bi
ll?:;:J
??F
-4?
#Itfc
9. Rubens, TheAndrians
of
the Nationalmuseum,
(afterTitian). Reproduced by permission

Stockholm.

81
82
.**:#
I?
?*????p?H?^:.:
10. Titian, The Andrians
(detail).

David Rosand
:::M?m>>?.,,,?
11. Rubens, The Andrians
(detail).

83
84
12. Titian, The Andrians
(detail).

David Rosand
13. Rubens, The Andrians
(detail).

85
86
LES
14. "Les Andriens,"

peinture
des
deux
ANDR?ENS.
20J
from Les images ou tableaux de platte

Philostrates
. . .mis
en francois
par Biaise
(Paris, 1614). Reproduced by permission of the

Spencer Collection, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox
and Tilden Foundations, New York.
de Vigenere...

David Rosand
'":: "
??lltli*A!a:!":::i
15. Titian, The Rape of Europa. Reproduced by permission of the

Isabella
Stewart
Gardner
Museum,
Boston.

87
88
16. Velazquez,
Las Hilanderas.
Reproduced
by permission
Museo
del Prado, Madrid.

David Rosand
89
We know a fair amount about the vicissitudes of the Ferrara

project and the literary source itself, which was an Italian trans
Greek text prepared by Demetrius
lation of the Alexandrian
Moschus
for Isabella d'Est? inMantua.27 This translation was
we know from the
borrowed by her brother Alfonso?who,
it
well
the
due
date. The first of
correspondence,
beyond
kept
the subjects selected from Philostratus'
gallery was an image
(Imagines 1.6). The speaker is
Cupids ?"Amori"
son
of
his host, "already an ardent
the
ten-year-old
addressing
to
and
learn":
eager
listener,
representing
See, Cupids are gathering apples; and if there are many of

them, do not be surprised. For they are children of the
and govern all mortal kind, and they are many
Nymphs
because of the many things men love ... Do you smell the
fragrance that spreads through the garden, or haven't your
senses responded yet? But listen carefully, for along with
of the garden
my description
will come to you.28
the fragrance
of the apples
senses alerted, we then follow (along with

the
old)
description
through the orchard:
Our
the ten-year
Here the trees grow straight, and there is space between

them to walk in, and tender grass covers the paths, fit to
be a couch to lie upon. On the ends of the branches are
golden apples, shadowed and radiant; below, a great com
pany of Cupids harvest them ... nor do they have need of
ladders to climb the trees because they fly on high to where
the apples hang. But let's not waste words over those
Cupids that are dancing or running about or those who
are sleeping
or actually
enjoying
eating
the apples.
in the
The painter, in his turn, respected the text. Delighting
the
detail of the description ?the
from
golden quivers hung
crown
rich
that
the
heads
instead
the
curls
of
trees,
Cupids'
and
and
the
dark
their
the
blue
of
wings,
garlands,
purple
gold
remained faithful to all of it
jewels on their baskets ?Titian
and caught its playful spirit as he realized
he received
activities of the Cupids. When
wrote
to
he
the
duke
and
1518,
congratulated
the little dramatic

in
his instructions
him on the choice

90
of subject: nothing could have been more pleasing or more after

his own heart.29
lured us into the garden by the synaesthetic
Having
appeal
and captured our fancy by laying out the
of his description
takes us still closer, adding to
variety of incident, Philostratus
his rhetorical
charge
the challenge
of interpretation:
Let us see what all those other Cupids mean. For here are
the four most beautiful of all in a spot of their own; two
of them are throwing an apple back and forth, and of the
second pair one shoots his companion with an arrow by
has already been wounded. Nor is there
in their faces; rather they offer their
of
any sign
hostility
breasts to each other so that the arrow may hit its mark.
to
It is a beautiful meaning:
if you wish
pay attention
the painter's intention. This is friendship, my
understand
boy, and love of one toward the other. Those who play ball
which
he himself
to fall in love, and so the one

the apple are beginning
the
he
throws
kisses
it, and the other holds
apple before
out his hands eagerly to catch it, to kiss it in turn and
throw it back. The pair of archers are confirming a love
already begun. I tell you, the first pair in their play are
intent on falling in love, while
the second couple are
arrows
in order not to cease
the
themselves
with
wounding
with
from loving.
rock from
the right of the picture, near "the overarching
beneath which springs water the deepest blue, fresh and good
to drink, which
in channels to irrigate the apple
is distributed
To
the
of
is
shrine
Venus, established by the Nymphs.
trees,"
Venus they offer such gifts as the silver mirror held aloft in
of Cupids and
thanks "because she has made them mothers
in
children."
their
therefore blest
At
is ignored by Titian.
detail of Philostratus'
ekphrasis
the
overall setting to the
Indeed, scansion of his picture ?from
series
of incidents winding
through the
foreground protagonists
at the shrine of Venus ?
back into space and the culmination
actually follows the sequence of the description. Pictorial syntax
this fidelity by
parallels that of the text. We can appreciate
No
looking
original
at another treatment of the theme. Before Titian, the

commission
for this painting had been awarded to Fra

David Rosand
91
but the Florentine monk died in 1517 before he

Bartolommeo,
could submit more than a preliminary drawing. There is reason
to believe that this sketch, or a similar one, was actually sent to
text from Philostratus.
the programmatic
Titian along with
From this design, "la carta ove era bozata quella figurina,"
the offering gesture of the leading
he evidently maintained
Nymph.30
Fra Bartolommeo's
sketch (fig. 7) allows us
compositional
to appreciate the literalism of Titian's
solution or, better, its
narrative
its
aspect,
legibility. The Floren
essentially "literary"
tine painter had conceived his Philostratan
picture basically
with reference to the final moment of the ekphrasis: the discov
ery of the shrine of Venus. In Titian's painting that motif closes
to the right, a narrative climax, a point of
the composition
arrival after our meandering
through the indulgent details of
the mass of cherubic activity. Fra Bartolommeo,
instead, had
made it the central event. To the task of realizing the ekphrasis
he brought a certain structural and generic preconception.
The
Amori of Philostratus was reconceived
per
(understandably,
haps) as an altarpiece: a centralized icon, on axis, is attended by
an enthusiastic congregation. And this new emphasis effectively
the image into a "Worship of Venus." Without
such
Titian seems to have read the text
typological preconception,
rather more attentively and responsively, and his final painting
a visual field
is offered to us as an equivalent
experience:
across its surface and into
intended to be read sequentially
notional depth, to be scanned. And yet that very inventory of
a larger whole;
incident constitutes
involvement
descriptive
translated
the details leads to appreciation of that larger order and

culminates, as in the original text, in the discovery of the shrine
of Venus.
Titian's
third painting for Alfonso
is
d'Est?, the Andrians,
based on another ekphrasis from the Imagines of Philostratus
with
(1.25), one that is short enough
to quote
in its entirety:
that is on the island of Andros and the

Andrians who have become drunk from the river are the
subject of this painting. For by act of Bacchus the earth of
is so charged with wine that it bursts forth
the Andrians
and sends up for them a river; if you are thinking of water,
The
stream of wine
it is not great, but if you think of wine
it is indeed a great

92
tastes it may well

river ?great
and divine. For whoever
disdain both Nile and Danube and may say that they too
would be more highly esteemed were they smaller, pro
vided they flowed like this river. This, I believe, is what
are singing
to their wives
the Andrians
and children,
crowned with ivy and sage; some of them are dancing on
either bank, some reclining. And perhaps this too is the
thenle of their song?that
while
the river Acheloiis
pro
the Pac
reeds, and the Peneius delights in Thessaly,
in the
tolus ... flowers, this river can make men powerful
duces
and rich, and caring toward their friends, and

and great instead of small; for it is possible to
make all these things one's own if one has drunk his fill of
this current. They sing as well that this river alone is not
disturbed by the feet of cattle or of horses, but is a draught
drawn from Bacchus, and is drunk unpolluted,
flowing for
men alone. This iswhat you should imagine you hear some
councils,
beautiful
of them singing, with
their voices
thick with wine.
set the scene and the tone of the painting,

Having
elucidates the details:
the text
Consider,
then, what is to be seen in the picture: The river
lies on a bed of grapes, pouring forth its stream, a river
undiluted and of agitated appearance;
thyrsi grow about it
like reeds around bodies of water,
their branches wound
with tendrils of vine. And if you go on over the land with
these drinking groups, you will encounter Tritons with
sea-shells with which they take the wine; some of it they
drink, some they blow out in streams. Some of them are
drunken and dancing. Bacchus himself sails to the revels
in the harbor, he leads
of Andros and, his ship now moored
a throng
and Sileni. He leads

of Satyrs and Bacchantes
are most spirited
who
Laughter (il riso) and Revel (il como),
so
to
that the river's
join the drinking,
gods and ready
bounty may be most sweetly enjoyed.31
translation ? or nearly all. Deities and
mortals, distinguished
respectively by their nudity and clothing,
mingle and share the benefits of the river. With a grand gesture
Bacchus himself pours the wine, while one of the revelers raises
It is all there in Titian's

David Rosand
93
against the bright sky a crystal clear pitcher of the divine red
liquid, as if for our inspection. Beyond the sensual framing
device of the classically inspired sleeping nymph, beautiful vic
tim of the Bacchic gift, the Andrians whirl through the paces
of their dance, frenzied yet controlled. The rhythms of the
in the chromatic clarity that bathes
choreography, participating
an
the entire scene, lend
element of grace to the more practical
at
the left. The Andrians sing the praises
motions of the visitors
its physical embodiment
of their unique stream. Music ?and
and reflection, dance ? offers itself as the organizing principle of
Titian's picture, ordering and ennobling the energies of drunken
revelry.
a fitting text, in French, was

the sheet of music in the fore
il ne scet que boy re soit ("Who
knows not what drinking is").
set as a canon; the music has
been attributed to Adrian Willaert,
then at the Ferrarese court
in Venice.32 A
but soon to transform the chapel at San Marco
in
the
and
of the
pattern
rhythm
meaning
?implicit
cyclical
to the imitative structure of the
inscribed text, fundamental
music, and, on a more general level, inherent in the significance
For the song of the Andrians
it is clearly legible on
ground: Qui boyt et ne reboyt
drinks and does not drink again
These words are appropriately
chosen;
the action of the

cycle of the vine ?informs
to begin again,
drinking, singing, dancing, pissing...
of the seasonal
painting:
da
capo.
Titian was universally

Of all the painters of the Renaissance,
to
not least because he,
"new
be
the
Apelles,"
acknowledged
more truly than any other, had found his "new Alexander."
When Charles V knighted
the painter in 1533, the patent of
as
that
Alexander
the Great allowed no other
declared
nobility
to make his portrait, so, from then on,
painter save Apelles
only the greatest living painter would portray the Holy Roman
seems to have
Emperor. But well before that honor Titian
to the challenge of antiquity and to have, in effect,
viewed himself as "Apelles redivivus."33 When he expressed to
Alfonso d'Est? his real appreciation of the ekphrastic challenge,
his own readiness to effect a true
the painter acknowledged
warmed
rinascimento
delVantichit?.
artists of the early Cinquecento
Other
most
Romano,
Imagines,
notably
especially
also
re-created
and Giulio
?Raphael
these
the "Amori."34 But Titian's
scenes
from
paintings

the
for
94
came to assume a privileged position

the camerino of Alfonso
in these developments,
especially once they were removed from
Ferrara, in 1598, and brought to the Aldobrandini
palace in
Rome. Philostratus, we recall, says nothing about the author
ship of the pictures he describes in that third-century Neapoli
tan villa; he gives no artists' names. As a connoisseur, his special
not attribution.
In the course
talent was for interpretation,
these anonymous
of the Renaissance,
however,
compositions
a
the work of
definitive
they became
authorship:
acquired
themselves
substituted
Titian. The modern master's
pictures
in
other
for the antique descriptions.
words,
Painting,
usurped
the role of the ekphrastic text in the transmission of images.35
It is only in the seventeenth
century, however, when
they
collection in Rome,
become more accessible in the Aldobrandini
realizations
that Titian's Philostratan
acquire their full art
historical resonance. Only then do we begin to get copies of
the compositions,
engraved as well as painted.36 Ironically, the
of
these
greatest
copies are in fact not directly after the originals.
saw and studied Titian's canvases when
Rubens undoubtedly
he was in Rome in the early years of the century, but his copies
of the Cupids
(fig. 9), which exhibit
(fig. 8) and the Andrians
all the freedom of his latest style, date from the 1630s. When
on a diplomatic mission,
in 1628-29,
the
he was inMadrid
Flemish master undertook to make copies of most of the Titians
in the Spanish royal collection. The Ferrarese pictures after
however, were not yet part of that collection;
Philostratus,
were
in Rome ? then in the Ludovisi collection. The
still
they
?
second hand, from copies
Flemish master evidently worked
even his own. Nevertheless,
however
indirectly,
possibly
versions of Titian's Cupids and Andrians
the spirit of the originals with the special affinity
Rubens's
the
two
respond to
that linked
painters.37
the spirit, but not quite to the letter: there are some
composition
striking deviations from the model. To Titian's
of the Cupids Rubens adds Venus herself, in her swan-drawn
we
chariot, in the sky. Going beyond the ekphrasis?which,
To
only the effigy of the goddess in the grotto, her

realizes the implications of the text: over this
of loves Venus reigns.38 And love itself under
orchard
fragrant
a
goes
image love is between male
telling change. In Titian's
infantile eroticism, Rubens
this
Platonizing
Cupids. Rejecting
recall, discovers
shrine ?Rubens

David Rosand
95
tar
the games: in particular, the breast-baring
?
a
and
transformed into putta
get of the archer is prominently
is, interestingly, deprived of wings.39
In the Andrians
he effects still more significant
changes.
heterosexualizes
Rubens's own late style, fully carnal, allows him to de-aesthet

the sleep of drunken stupor: his reclining
icize, as it were,
no
Ariadne (the inspiration behind Titian's
is
abandoned
nymph
she snores
invention); for all her token gesture of modesty,
In
this
with
abandon
context,
10,11).
embarrassing
(figs.
lustily
another ekphrasis from the Imagines (1.15) may come to mind,
the discovery of Ariadne by Bacchus: "And look at Ariadne, or
rather at her sleep; for her bosom is bare to the waist, and her
is bent back and her delicate throat, and all her right
armpit, but the left hand rests on her mantle that a gust of wind
and how sweet
may not expose her. How fair a sight, Dionysus,
neck
its fragrance is of apples or of grapes, you

her breath! Whether
can tell after you have kissed her!"40 Still, however suggestive
however appealing the comparison, we have
the description,
no reason
to believe that Rubens consulted any text for this

of
motif
abundant naturalism.
of this
Rubens characterizes
the participants
Furthermore,
new
in
Bacchus
the
bacchanal
ways.
himself,
presiding guest
pouring the wine, ismore precisely identified by his ivy crown
not incidentally, makes him more
and panther skin?which,
in general are older; Titian's
modest.
The male celebrants
become bald. In this way the sixty-year-old
youths mature,
the island of Philo
Rubens personalizes Andros; appropriating
stratus and of Titian, he turns it, poignantly,
into amythological
version of his own garden of love.41
Of
most
effected by Rubens, the

figurai transformations
to
with
textual
reference is that of the
interesting
regard
ancient river god himself
the
crucial source of the
(fig. 12):
Bacchic stream that distinguishes
the island of Andros becomes
instead a young shepherd playing a rustic flute (fig. 13). This is
a curious emendation,
for it disregards an absolutely essential
the many
the key attribute of the

description,
Titian's
island. All the known copies of
picture preserve that
a
remains
feature of other pictorial
prominent
figure, which
?
including the engraved illustration to
renderings of the theme
French translation
Blaise de Vigenere's
(fig. 14).42 No other
river god. This
copies of Titian's picture miss the viniferous
detail
of Philostratus'

96
realized by Rubens, who was hardly

change was deliberately
the
of
Imagines, a copy of which was in his library.43
ignorant
of
And the Flemish master draws the logical consequences
his emendation: his river runs crystal clear. The water becomes
occurs
wine only as it is drunk; the miraculous
transformation
in the glass. The liquid being
before our very eyes, Cana-like,
flows
Bacchus
clear; only in his dish does it reveal
poured by
fat Silenus drinks
itself as wine. At the extreme
left, Titian's
from an opaque clay jug. Rubens substitutes a transparent glass
its transformed
red contents, which
vessel, making manifest
At
the very center of
of
the
the
cheeks
down
eager toper.
pour
the miracle
that
the crystal pitcher
the composition,
epitomizes
to
its
of Andros is lowered; brought closer
admiring celebrant,
it casts a glow of red across his face, the blush of its effect
realized pictorially.
not to the
In remaking Andros,
Rubens was responding
by Titian, not
ekphrasis of Philostratus but to the composition
to the literary account but to its pictorial realization. Rubens,
a Titian,
in other words, was re-creating
effectively
styling
himself Titianus redivivus.44
In a letter of 1637 to Franciscus
Junius, acknowledging
receipt of his De Pictura Veterum, Rubens praised this study of
the painters of antiquity for its erudition and style as well as
its careful attention to detail. "But," he confesses,
since those examples of the ancient painters can now be
and comprehended
followed only in the imagination,
by
each one of us, more or less, for himself, Iwish that some
such treatise on the paintings of the Italian masters might
be carried out with similar care. For examples or models
of their work are publicly exhibited even today; one may
the finger and say, "There they are."
are perceived by the senses produce
durable impression, require a closer
for study than
and afford a richer material
examination,
those which present themselves to us only in the imagina
tion, like dreams, or so obscured by words that we try in
point to them with

Those things which
a sharper and more
vain to grasp them (asOrpheus the shade of Eurydice), but

often elude us and thwart our hopes. We can say
for how few among us, in attempting
this from experience;
to present in visual terms some famous work of Apelles or
which

David Rosand
97
is graphically described by Pliny or by

which
other authors, will not produce something that is insulting
or alien to the dignity of the ancients? But each one indulg
ing his own talent, will offer an inferior wine as a substitute
for that bittersweet
vintage, and do injury to those great
spirits whom I follow with the profoundest veneration. It is
rather that I adore their footsteps, than that I ingenuously
profess to be able to follow them, if only in thought.45
Timanthes
Clearly, in the century separating Titian's paintings for Fer

rara and Rubens's copies of them, an attitude had changed. The
and
enthusiasm of rediscovery that animated the Renaissance,
to
had
the
Renaissance
the
artist,
yielded
especially
archaeology
of a more scientific age. In any event, for all his own classical
erudition, Rubens accepted the direct challenge not of Apelles
of the painter who could be known to him
but of Titian ?not
"merc?
only
degli scrittori" but of the painter whose works
confronted
him, of which he could indeed say, "There
directly
they
are."
It is not without
significance that Titian himself referred to

his mythological
paintings, and especially those he later did for
term used was favola, and
II
of
Spain, as po?sie. Another
Philip
both recall their roots in Alberti's fifteenth-century
concept of
istoria. All remind us of the basic ambition of Renaissance
painting, to be legible in the fullest rhetorical sense. All imply
a picture/text
analogy: ut pictura poesis.
A concluding example: The Rape of Europa (fig. 15) was the
that Titian
last in the cycle of po?sie
for Philip.
painted
are
the
of
these
subjects
pictures
Although
generally "Ovidian,"
to
the artist looked to other sources as well, and especially
ekphraseis. The inspiring text behind the Rape of Europa seems
to have been a description
in Achilles Tatius's romance of Leu
The
and
tale opens in the city of Sidon,
cippe
Clitophon.46
home of Europa; the narrator, a stranger viewing
the city's
sights, pauses before a picture of our subject and offers an
reads (inWilliam
Burton's English
extended ekphrasis?which
of 1597):
. . . her breast to her
privy parts was attired with a vaile
of lawne, the rest of her body was covered with a purple

98
mantle,
all
the
other
parts
were
to
be
seene,
save
there
her garments covered, for she had a deepe navill, a

[broad] smooth belly, narrow flanke, round buttocks: her
tender brests seemed to swel, throgh the midle of which
went down a faire narrow way most pleasant & delightfull
to the beholders: with one hand did she holde his home,
where
the other his taile, but yet so that the attire of her
head covered with a scarf cast over her shoulders, was held
on fast against the force of the wind, which did so beat on
it seemed to swell. She thus
her bosom, that every where
was
on
like a shippe, her scarfe
caried
the
bull,
sitting
a
in
Round
about the bull Dolphins
of
stead
sayle.
serving
floted about, and sported at their loves in such sort, as that
drawne.47
you would thinke, you saw their verie motions
with
And,
inclining
toward interpretation,
the description
continues:
a little boy, which

led the bull, displaying his
wings abroade, holding in his hand a Torch, and turning
to Jupiter did smile, as though he mocked
him, that for
his cause was thus transformed into a Bull. I thus beholding
this picture, praysed evry part thereof: but looking more
ledde the Bull, I spake thus
earnestly upon Cupid, which
to my self: Beholde how heaven, sea and land, do obey the
of this litle boy!
commandments
There was
The story of Europa's rape is an inset. From his description

the narrator draws a lesson, a standard part of the rhetorical
the power of
exercise, a lesson concerning quite appropriately
and the
is interrupted by the appearance of Clitophon,
the ekphrasis the author
story proper then begins. Throughout
interjects praises of the painter and marvels at the convincing
realism of the details. The more he insists upon these points,
as a challenge
to
becomes
relevant his description
the more
love. He
later painters. And it is just this quality of Achilles Tatius'

account of Europa that must have lent it a special attraction for
Titian.
have much in common with
True, even Ovid's descriptions
of the Rape of Europa?what
the ancient pictorial compositions
Erwin Panofsky called their "family likeness."48 But Ovid's
is,
so to speak, a straight narration, while that of the Alexandrian

David Rosand
99
is based on a (putative) image, an actual work of art,

of the
but antique, which must have demanded
anonymous
artist to be re-created. Titian was not only out
Renaissance
in his Rape of Europa ? standard stuff for him ?
doing Nature
but also the naturalism of ancient art, and it is in this sense
that his painting reveals what we may consider its personal or
author
professional meaning.
The theme itself is very much a part of this meaning.
The
in
the
first
the
series
been
of
had
Jupiter's passions
subject
the
depicted by Arachne in her hubristic contest with Minerva,
locus classicus for which was indeed that great model for the
6.103
insets of the Renaissance, Metamorphoses
ekphrastic
28 ? "Maeonis elusam d?sign?t imagine tauri / Europam: verum
taurum, fr?ta vera putares." The story of Europa eventually
supplanted the rest of the series and came itself to represent the
in Spenser's Muiopotmos
full effort of Arachne ?as
(277-99).
search for the divine origins of the art
late Renaissance's
of painting and for an appropriate tutelary deity ? for an art, we
must remember, never accorded such high status in antiquity?
herself was
focused on this myth,
through which Minerva
of the
invoked as the goddess of painting. Her punishment
to
Arachne
became
what
the
painting
impudent
Apollo-Marsyas
legend was tomusic: the drama enacted the hierarchical tensions
the divine and human levels of the art.
between
The
in Las Hilanderas
When Velazquez,
the
(fig. 16), depicted
actual competition
between the immortal and mortal weavers,
he quite naturally turned to Titian for the image of Arachne's
invention, the etiological
image of all narrative painting. The
to the Venetian, whose po?sie
master
full
tribute
Spanish
paid
he knew so well, by identifying his Rape of Europa with/as
Arachne's
tapestry. Reaching back to an image from antiquity,
inset invokes not a text but an actual
Velazquez's
ekphrastic
?
as
Rubens
would say, that was really there.
picture
something,
Titian's achievement, as I have suggested, was to have substi
tuted his paintings for the ancient texts, to have inserted him
the present and the past ?a remarkable
self, his art, between
cultural position. Mediating
between the myths of the past and
so many "lost"
those of the future, personally
reconstructing
images of ancient painting, demonstrating with his brush their
in
reality, he inserted his own art as a permanent monument
the history of the classical tradition. And by that very act?

100 EKPHRASISAND THE GENERATION OF IMAGES

? the Renaissance
in particular,
artist
recognized
more
much
rendered
that
distant.
antiquity
paradoxically
The second phase of the ekphrastic cycle is closed: text has
we might
The
say, to interpictoriality.
yielded to image?as
a
new
has
and
reclaimed
initiative
the
established
painter
as Rubens,
momentum.
NOTES
1. C? Pope's
tion of Book
"Observations
XVin
on the Shield of Achilles"
of the Iliad:
"In which
to his transla
appended
of Homer
being first
what exact order all that he
the words
an attempt will be made

to shew with
translated,
to the rules of painting."
describes may enter into the composition,
according
his
with
the
invocation
of
the
author
essay
supporting
professional
Concluding
Kneller,
Pope politely
ity of Sir Godfrey
that he who gives this testimony
wishing
of it."
design by his own execution
urges the cycle on: "I cannot help

to Homer,
so great a
would
ennoble
are
in the Renaissance
studies of the ancient
ekphrasis
are listed in the bibliography
of the most
Foerster, which
to the subject: Michaela
recent contribution
und Herrscher
J.Marek,
Ekphrasis
imWerk Tizians und Leonardos,
R?mische
allegorie: Antike Bildbeschreibungen
3 (Worms, 1985), 142. For a broader over
Studien der Bibliotheca
Hertziana
2. The
fundamental
those
of Richard
view,
see the article
(Stuttgart,
owes much
Aesthetic
in Reallexikon
f?r Antike und Christentum
by G. Downey
4:921-44.
interest in the subject
The revival of critical
1950-86)
to an important article by Svetlana Leontief Alpers,
"Ekphrasis and
in Vasari's Lives," Journal of the Warburg
Attitudes
and Courtauld
more
recent contributions
23 (1960),
include Norman
190-215;
on Pietro Aretino's
Some Observations
Art
uEkphrasis and Imagination:
Art Bulletin
68 (1986), 207-17;
David Carrier,
and
Criticism,"
"Ekphrasis
Institutes
Land,
Two Modes
of Art History Writing,"
British Journal of Aesthetics
Interpretation:
27 (1987), 20-31;
"The Poetics of Ekphrasis," Word and Image
John Hollander,
4 (1988), 209-17.
see Creighton
E. Gilbert,
Frameworks
for
models,
"Antique
Art Theory:
Alberti
3 (1943-45),
and Pino," Marsyas
87-106;
different view, D. R. Edward Wright,
"Alberti's De Pictura:
and, a somewhat
Its Literary
the
and Courtauld
and Purpose,"
Structure
of
Journal
Warburg
3. On Alberti's
Renaissance
Giotto
also: Michael
and the Orators:
(1984), 52-71;
Baxandall,
in Italy and the Discovery
Observers
of Painting
of Pictorial Composi
"Ut Rhetorica
1350-1450
and John R. Spencer,
1971), 121-39;
(Oxford,
Institutes
47
Humanist
tion
Pictura:
of Painting,"
A Study in Quattrocento
Theory
Institutes
20 (1957), 26-44.
and Courtauld
Journal
of the Warburg
4.
read the
and "Pictor
inscribitur,"
"Rudimenta,"
"Qui pictura
incipit,"
arte et numquam
rubrics in the first printed edition: De pictura praestantissima
. . .
Leonis Baptistae
satis laudata
libri tres absolutissimi,
de Albertis
(Basle,
1540).
5. These
observations
on
the
special
character
of book
3 draw
upon

my
ioi
David Rosand
of Painting:
"Ekphrasis and the Renaissance
in Florilegium
Columbianum:
Book,"
Essays
ed. Karl-Ludwig
Somerville
Selig and Robert
Observations
on Alberti's
Third
inHonor
of Paul Oskar Kristeller,

(New York, 1987), 147-65.
6. De Pictura,
ed. Cecil Grayson
(Rome-Bari,
1975), 133,1?35,1153.
Grayson's
standard edition ? reprinted from Leon Battista Alberti, Opere volgari, vol.
on facing pages both the Latin text and Alberti's
3 (Bari, 1973) ?includes
now
are from Leon Battista Alberti,

Italian translation.
translations
On
English
and On Sculpture,
ed. and trans. Grayson
(London,
1972).
Painting
7. On this concept,
the most recent contribution
is Kristine Patz, "Zum Begriff
in L. B. Alberti's
'De Pictura'," Zeitschrift
der 'Historia'
f?r Kunstgeschichte
49 (1986), 269-87.
see Baxandall,
the ekphrastic mode
among the humanists,
78-96.
the Orators,
9. Translation
from Baxandall,
text, 155-57.
92-93;
original
10. Ibid., 93; original
text, 160.
8. On
Giotto
and
11.
Ibid., 121-39
(ch. Ill: "Alberti and the Humanists:
Composition").
12. Warburg
first recognized
the significance
of these issues in his thesis of
in
'Geburt der Venus'
und 'Fr?hling',"
1893, "Sandro Botticellis
reprinted
?
1-58
his Gesammelte
Alberti's
1932),
Schriften
discussing
(Leipzig-Berlin,
on 10-13.
comments
An
Intellectual
For further discussion,
Biography
(London,
toWarburg's
objections
perception
matic nature of his observations:
Figures: Metaphor
58, esp. 32-33.
13. On
see E. H. Gombrich,
Aby Warburg:
244-51.
Recent
177-85,
1970),
231-38,
program
ignore Alberti and the deliberately
c? Paul Holberton,
"Of Antique
and Other
in Early Renaissance
Art," Word
and Image
1 (1985),
31
the iconographie
role of "The Calumny
of Apelles"
in the formation
see Erwin
in Iconology:
Truth"
Studies
personified,
Panofsky,
of "naked
in the Art of the Renaissance

(1939; New York, 1962), 157
subject, see David Cast, The Calumny
of Apelles: A Study in
theHumanist
Tradition
(New Haven-London,
1981), with earlier bibliography.
case and its late Renaissance
context
14. Especially
Federico Zuccaro,
whose
are reviewed
in Cast, The Calumny
121-58.
of Apelles,
Humanistic
59. On
Themes
the entire
as alter Apelles
to
in S.
the
according
epitaph
Maria
in Rome
sopra Minerva
Vasari, Le vite de' pi?
(recorded by Giorgio
ed. Gaetano Milanesi
eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori,
[Florence, 1906],
15. Evidently
the first modern
painter
Fra Ang?lico ? against his Christian
was
to be commemorated
will,
to Apelles
Simone Martini
Petrarch had already compared
2:522) ?although
to Giotto.
For a survey of "Apelles
and Boccaccio
had paid a similar compliment
see Cast, The
and the Tradition
of the Academies,"
with
further references,
contexts
159-96.
For
of
the
the
topos: Andr?
Calumny
of Apelles,
larger
Apelles
Art et humanisme
au temps de Laurent
Panofsky, Renaissance
leMagnifique,
2d ed.
in
and Renascences
(Paris, 1961), esp. 91-105;
et passim.
Western Art, 2d ed. (Stockholm,
182-88
1965), 21-35,
see Cast, The Calumny
16. For Botticelli's
with
29-54,
of Apelles,
Calumny,
as well as Ronald
earlier bibliography,
58-64,
and, for Mantegna's
drawing,
On Mantegna
1986), 486-87.
(Berkeley-Los
Lightbown,
Mantegna
Angeles,
Chastel,
? Florence
and Erwin
see Michelangelo
and Alberti,
Muraro,
"Mantegna
e cultura aMantova
Atti
nel primo Rinascimento:
nale di studi
sul Rinascimento
(Florence,
1966),
e Alberti,"
inArte, pensiero
del VI Convegno
internazio
103-32.
Baxandall
has argued


that "it was Mantegna
in the strict
the visual models

of Alberti's
produced
compositio,
of engravings
able to carry patterns
of Albertian
into the painters' workshops"
(Giotto and the Orators,
133).
models
narrative
who
sense
style
17. Lucian, T uxis sive Antiochus,
the Elder, Imagines
II.3.
3-8; Philostratus
Cast's reading of the theme as "merely decorative
in purpose"
(The Calumny
I would
what
its
consider
48, n. 22) seems too narrow, missing
of Apelles,
to the Renaissance
professional
significance
see Edgar Wind,
18. On "Seneca's Graces,"
rev. ed.
painter.
Pagan Mysteries
1967), 26-35.
in the Renaissance,
(Middlesex-Baltimore-Victoria,
19. Lucian, Amores 41, declared
that diaphanous
"of a tissue as fine as
clothes,
a spider's web, are only a pretense,
so as to prevent the appearance
of complete
nakedness."
Graces all the more
cleaning of the Primavera has made Botticelli's
see
La
Primavera
storia di un quadro
Umberto
del
Botticelli:
Baldini,
appealing:
e di un restauro (Milan, 1984). On the Graces
in particular,
c? the remarks of
20.
Recent
"Of Antique
Holberton,
21. Still the most useful
Pictura
Poesis:
and Other
introduction
46-50.
Figures,"
to these issues
The Humanistic
For the personal

inflection
in Titian's Poesie,"
Meaning
Theory
of Painting
of the simile, see David
is Rensselaer
W.
(1940; New York,

"Ut Pictor
Rosand,
Lee, Ut
1967).
Poeta:
New Literary History

3 (1971-72),
527-46.
and the Painters: Mythological
See esp. R. W. Hanning,
"Ariosto, Ovid,
in Ariosto
1974 in America:
Atti del
in Orlando
Furioso X and XI,"
Paragone
?
Univer
Ariostesco
Dicembre
1974, Casa Italiana della Columbia
Congresso
22.
For many
(Ravenna,
1976), 99-116.
years Professor
sity, ed. Aldo Scaglione
and I taught a seminar together on themes in the art and literature of
Hanning
once again
to acknowledge
I take advantage
of this occasion
the Renaissance.
and to him.
I owe to that experience
how much
Ovidio
Or, perhaps, more directly on the fourteenth-century
volgarizato
as Philipp Fehl has suggested:
"The Worship
of
de' Bonsignori,
by Giovanni
in Bellini's
and Titian's
for Alfonso
Bacchanals
Bacchus
and Venus
d'Est?,"
23.
The
of Art) 6 (1974), 37-95.
of Art (National Gallery
and restoration;
for an
has been undergoing
cleaning
see David Bull, "The Restoration
of Bellini's-Titian's
Feast of
in the History
Studies
canvas
Bellini-Titian
interim report,
in Bacchanals
the Gods,"
by Titian and Rubens: Papers given at a Symposium

ed. G?rel Cavalli-Bj?rkman
18-19,1987,
Stockholm, March
"Titian repairs Bellini,"
1987), 9-16. C? also Dana Goodgal,
(Stockholm,
17-24.
the same volume,
in
Nationalmuseum,
24.
The
are Edgar Wind's

effort to impose
Bellini's Feast of the Gods: A Study
1948), and John Walker's
assembly
(Cambridge, Mass.,
Bellini and Titian at Ferrara: A
and visual materials,
historical
pioneering
reading on
in Venetian Humanism
a unified
of the relevant
in
studies
its final
of this project
iconography,
1956). Since then there have been several

of Styles and Taste (London,
For
to reconstruct
with no definitive
solution.
Alfonso's
camerino,
see the articles
recent contributions,
in
with previous bibliography,
11 (1987), and Charles Hope,
"The
Bulletin
Nationalmuseum
(Stockholm)
Study
attempts
the most
in Bacchanals
A Reconsideration
of the Evidence,"
by
in the
"On the Camerino,"
25^42; Beverly Louise Brown,
same volume, 43-56;
in "U
"Alfonso d'Este's Camerino,"
and John Shearman,
se rendit en Italie": Etudes offertes ? Andr? Chastel
1987), 209
(Rome-Paris,
229.
Camerino
Titian
d'Alabastro:
and Rubens,

David Rosand
103
10.
in Ovid's Heroides
25. Titian certainly drew as well on Ariadne's
soliloquy
the painting
and its sources, see Cecil Gould, The Studio of Alfonso
Regarding
and Ariadne
d'Est? and Titian's Bacchus
1969); and, most
(London,
recently,
"Battista
Paul Holberton,
Guarino's
Catullus
and Titian's
'Bacchus
and Ari
128
adne'," Burlington Magazine
Texts for the Camerino
Pictures,"
26.
an attempt
For
locate
"The Imagines
Lehmann-Hartleben,
(1941), 16-44.
27.
to
and idem, "The Choice

of
(1986), 347-50,
in Bacchanals
57-66.
by Titian and Rubens,
see Karl
these described
images historically,
of the Elder Philostratus,"
See Maria
Raina Fehl, "Four 'Imagines'

Moscus
by Demetrius
prepared
123-37.
und Herrscherallegorie,
Translation
Ekphrasis
28. Philostratus
the Elder,
Imagines,
Mass.,
Library, London-Cambridge,
see R. M. Fehl, inMarek,
Art Bulletin
23
in the
by the Elder Philostratus
in Marek,
for Isabella d'Est?,"
trans. Arthur Fairbanks

(Loeb Classical
For the Italian of Moscus,
1931), 21-29.
133-35.
Ekphrasis
core Vostra
al mi?
che pi? grata cosa ne pi? conforme
in his
Titian writes
Illustrissima
ordin?re,"
Signoria non mi haveria potuto
letter of 1 April 1518 (Tiziano: le lettere, ed. Celso Fabbro [Cadore, 1977], no.
29.
"Io
li affirmo
5).
30. The
drawing was delivered

The text of Tebaldi's
in Venice.
at Ferrara,
32,
n. 44.
For
to Titian
the duke's agent

by Jacopo Tebaldi,
is reprinted
inWalker,
Bellini and Titian
see now Chris
the drawing
itself (Uffizi 1269E),
letter
e d?lia sua scuola

(Gabinetto Disegni
1986), cat. no. 89, with bibliography.
Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence,
trans. Fairbanks,
31. Philostratus
97-99.
the Elder, Imagines,
The Italian
R. M. Fehl, inMarek,
Moscus:
135-36.
Ekphrasis
Fischer,
32.
Disegni
The
the canon
Lowinsky,
the Canon
di Fra Bartolommeo
of
in the long history

of this drunken
round
of
significance
to Bach, has been argued by Edward
per tonos, from Aristoxenus
of
and History
"Music in Titian's Bacchanal
of the Andrians: Origin
per tonos," in Titian: His World and His Legacy, ed. David Rosand
special
Cf. the response of Philipp P. Fehl, "Imitation

(New York, 1982), 191-282.
a Source of Greatness:
and the Painting
of the Ancients,"
Rubens, Titian,
124.
Bacchanals
as
in
33. See Ruth Wedgwood

in Essays
inMemory
Kennedy,
"Apelles Redivivus,"
New York, 1964), 160-70.
of Karl Lehmann
(Marsyas supplement,
34. The
in the
of Philostratus
for the Renaissance,
importance
recognized
older
Gem?lde
"Philostrats
sources, was first fully investigated
Foerster,
by Richard
in der Renaissance,
"Jahrbuch der K?niglich Preussischen Kunstsamm
lungen 25 (1904), 15^8.

35. We might note that Philostratus
evidently did not enjoy a wide readership
in the Renaissance.
in
The Italian translation
of Demetrius
Moschus
remained
A French translation,
in 1578 and
manuscript.
by Blaise de Vigenere,
appeared
seems to have been the only publication
in the sixteenth century;
of the Imagines
it was reissued
in 1614.
in a handsomely
illustrated
edition
produced
36.
For
and Titian
the copies of Titian's

at Ferrara,
105-21.
Philostratan
compositions,
see Walker,
37.
Bellini
See Julius S. Held,

in Titian: His World and His
"Rubens and Titian,"
to Titian's
in
283-339.
On Rubens's
Philostratan
response
pictures
see G?rel Cavalli-Bj?rkman,
"Rubens and Titian," Nationalmuseum
particular,
Legacy,


11 (1987), 101-13; and in Bacchanals
(Stockholm)
by Titian and Rubens
and Andrians:
The
of Jeffrey M. M?ller,
"Rubens's Cupids
the contributions
First Documents
and What
David Rosand,
"An Arc of
They Tell Us," 75-80;
of Pictorial Knowledge,"
Flame: On the Transmission
81-92;
Cavalli-Bj?rk
Bulletin
on a Theme,"
P.
and Venus: Variations
93-106;
"Worship of Bacchus
as a Source of Greatness,"
"Rubens
107-32; Albert Ch?telet,
Fehl, "Imitation
and Kristin Belkin, "Titian,
devant Titian: De la critique ? l'humilit?,"
133-40;
143-52.
and Van Dyck: A New
Look at Old Evidence,"
Rubens
38. The orchard itself in Rubens's more opulent nature yields a richer harvest;
man,
the trees are more
is further
fruit. The statue of the goddess
heavily laden with
in
and the gift offered by the nymphs,
by the buttress of a dolphin,
to the silver mirror,
is transformed
from an inscribed
tablet into a
addition
comb. Among other details, Rubens
ignores the precious gems on the baskets?
elaborated
whose
to Philostratus'
rhetorical
connoisseurship,
according
see
to Hephaestus!"
On these jewels in Titian's
painting,
112-14.
of P. Fehl, "Imitation
workmanship,
"must be attributed
the comments
in
is more
elaborated
pr?grammatically
alary gender distinction
own Feast of Venus in Vienna.
The ancient differentiation
between
?
the feathered wings of Cupid and the lepidopterous
already
wings of Psyche
a certain mythological
to
sanction
in
the
Farnesina?lends
explored by Raphael
On the Vienna
the infantile heterosexuality.
canvas, see Philipp Fehl, "Rubens's
39.
This
Rubens's
114 (1972),
'Feast of Venus Verticordia',"
159-62;
and,
Burlington Magazine
on the question
and sexual differentiation
of butterfly wings
among Rubens's
"Rubens's
infants, see Elizabeth McGrath,
Infant-Cornucopia,
"Journal of the
40 (1977), 315-18,
Institutes
and Courtauld
esp. n. 9.
Warburg
trans. Fairbank,
63-65. We should recall
the Elder, Imagines,
40. Philostratus
that in the seventeenth
century Titian's
sleeping nude had been made modest
by an overpainted
of 1636 and not
identified
in Giovanni Andrea Podest?'s

recorded
print
covering,
has
until the nineteenth
century. Cavalli-Bj?rkman
an intoxicating
version as henbane,
plant known to produce
foliate
removed
Rubens's
dizziness
and delirium
Theme,"
41. There
in Bacchanals
is hardly
of Bacchus
("Worship
a motif
in Titian's
Andrians
and Venus:
101).
that
Variations
is not modified
on a
to some
is
is enlarged
slightly and the foreground
degree by Rubens?e.g.,
score is eliminated,
the
filled more precisely with plants; the musical
although
are retained;
is changed
from fowl to fruit;
the still-life menu
instruments
to Philostratus,
should be
the ambiguous
(who, according
background
figures
the format
the ship of
by a fisherman;
a peahen;
and two
in the tree becomes
in the movement
of Rubens's
birds participate
sky.
. . .mis en
42. Les images ou tableaux de platte peinture
francois par Biaise
de Vigenere
1614). For the illustration
(Paris: Chez la veufue d'Abel l'Angelier,
"Tritons
at the
Bacchus
becomes
are
river's mouth")
two; the partridge
substituted
"An Arc of Flame," fig. 4.

in Les images . . . , see Rosand,
of "Les Amours"
in 1578. The edition published
translation was originally
published
Vigenere's
issued in 1609 or 1611. The illustrated edition
by Abel l'Angelier was evidently
in
the following
of 1614 was republished
year, with further editions appearing
to Michael
for this informa
Koortbojian
1628, 1629, and 1637 (I am grateful
seems to have been the only sixteenth-century
tion). This French translation
in the vernacular
of the Imagines
(c? R. R. Bolgar, The Classical
publication

David Rosand
105
For the engravings,

and Its Beneficiaries
[New York, 1964], 520-21).
Heritage
see W. McAllister
to the Images ou tableaux de platte
Johnson,
"Prolegomena
on Two Drawings
of the School of Fontainebleau,"
peinture, with an Excursus
73 (1969), 277-92.
des beaux-arts
Gazette
on other projects,
that for iconographie
information
regarding
and Hercules,
he availed himself of the text. See Julius S. Held, The
Sketches of Peter Paul Rubens
1980), 1, pp. 172-83,
261, 279,
(Princeton,
43. We
know
Achilles
Oil
329.
44.
For a different
Fehl, "Imitation
45. Trans. Ruth
variations on Titian's
inventions,
reading of Rubens's
106-32.
Saunders Magurn,
The Letters of Peter Paul Rubens
see P.
(Cam
translation
and
1955), no. 241. C? P. Fehl's slightly different
bridge, Mass.,
112.
"Imitation
comment,
46. Without
the issue, we need only observe
that the text was not
belaboring
of it came out of his
only known to Titian, but that the first Italian translations
own
"Ut Pictor Poeta,"

also
542-44;
54
Rape of Europa," Art Bulletin
see David Rosand,
For further discussion,
"Titian and the
(1972),
?
et historiae
3 (1981), 85-96,
of the Brush," Artibus
esp. 94, n. 6
Eloquence
to which might
from "gli
left unfinished,
be added another
image by Titian,
e Clitofonte"
Le maraviglie
dell'arte
cited by Carlo Ridolfo,
Amori di Leucippe
circle
Donald
of poligrafi
friends. See Rosand,
Jr., "The Source of Titian's
Stone,
47-49.
von Hadeln
1:206.
(Berlin, 1914-24),
(1648), ed. Detlev
ed. Stephen Gaselee
47. The Loves of Clitophon
and Leucippe,
Brett-Smith
1923), 3.
(Oxford,
48.
Erwin
Panofsky,
Problems
in Titian,
Mostly
Iconographie
and H.
(New
1969), 165.

F. B.
York,

Ecphasis

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Ekphrasis and the Generation of Images

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Ekphrasis and the Generation

images that yet

and the Arts. An

on Poetics, "The Poetics

read at the Tenth

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EKPHRASISAND THE GENERATION OF IMAGES

can be quite precise about the first moment:

the ancient rhetorical treatise, and it is just this appropriation

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Inventio here exists effectively on the level of idea, beyond

interest of a pictorial invention

that Lucian gives of Calumny painted by

of this kind (153).

his ekphrasis of the "Calumny of Apelles"

shall we say too about those three young sisters,

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EKPHRASISAND THE GENERATION OF IMAGES

You can appreciate how inventions of this kind bring great

Ekphrasis, practiced with particular flourish through Byzan

you are depicting birds or beasts, perilous

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the air quivers with

they celebrate and perpetuate

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EKPHRASISAND THE GENERATION OF IMAGES

for their subject. But that, we know, had been the

Baxandall has very elegantly shown just how Alberti

to and program for painting,

the visual riches of International Gothic

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and they had civilized the

leaves and clothing"

beholder. Such volatility was not to be found in the Giottesque

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EKPHRASISAND THE GENERATION OF IMAGES

who is so often cited as the ideally Albertian master, Piero della

In the painting there was a man with enormous ears stick

of the painter. And here is the ethical force of the

ated only at the last moment

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Alberti, we recall, concludes his Lucianic ekphrasis with a

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EKPHRASISAND THE GENERATION OF IMAGES

the throne of the asinine judge, a family of centaurs: the subject

In the context of Delia Pittura, that is, of Alberti's own Italian

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to the painter. Pliny (Historia Naturalis,

with transparent garments ("muliere tralucida veste"),

sciousness. As important, he inflected it to read ut pictor poeta.

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EKPHRASISAND THE GENERATION OF IMAGES

stanzas of canto 33 of the

calls the Plinian

roll of ancient painters?Tima

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1. Pisanello, The Vision of St. Eustace. Reproduced by permission

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EKPHRASISAND THE GENERATION OF IMAGES