In this essay, I argue that Raphael’s double portrait of Agostino Beazzano and Andrea Navagero formed the painter’s fullest response—made in purely pictorial terms—to Renaissance prosody as it was ...

This article considers selected book illustrations that were published in the 1530s by Augsburg printer Heinrich Steiner. It compares Steiner’s choice of images for Schimpff und Ernst (1534), a pop...

In all three of James Cook’s expeditions to the Pacific, visual artists were hired by the Royal Society and the Admiralty to communicate scientific information that relied on visual evidence, while...

This article examines the shifting iconographical meaning and purpose of the Latin phrase ecce homo in visual art in the later Middle Ages. As told in John 19: 4–5, ecce homo was the terse two-line...

This study considers artworks from across the modern and contemporary period (with a focus on the 1940s onwards) where writing is presented as incomprehensible to the viewer. This can occur, for in...

Building on recent specialised studies on the critique of illustration in individual authors or periods, this article develops a new methodology for a large comparative study of the critique of lit...

This article discusses the implications of multimodal artificial intelligence (AI), including image generators such as DALL·E, for the traditional concept of ekphrasis. Using ekphrasis as an exampl...

Rebuses—visual riddles that replace words or syllables by images—were highly popular in early modern Europe. Many broadsheets containing rebus poems were printed in France and Germany in the late s...

This article focuses upon the arrangement of written words in geometric shapes or patterns—specifically in Arabic script. It takes the case of the Kitāb al-diryāq (Book of Antidotes, 595 AH/1199 CE...

Published in Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry (Vol. 40, No. 1, 2024)

Although “Adaptation Studies” appears to constitute a fully fledged disciplinary field, with a solid theoretical base resting on a well understood and precisely defined phenomenon, it has struggled...

This essay examines the metamorphic nature of Franz Kafka’s writing. I focus in particular on the unpublished manuscripts Kafka left behind, which reveal the structural instability of his texts and...

In the summer of 2020, Walt Disney Theme Parks announced plans to reimagine the popular attraction “Splash Mountain” in the theme of the 2009 feature-length animated film The Princess and the Frog....

This article examines the 2005 film adaptation of Dany Laferrière’s 1997 collection La Chair du maître, entitled Vers le sud, directed by Laurent Cantet. In La Chair du maître, Laferrière writes sh...

This essay analyzes the Netflix-produced French series Lupin dans l’ombre d’Arsène, showing the exhaustion of the fidelity question. In fact, the television show is not so much an updated transmedi...

The Ecstasy of St. Teresa is arguably the most controversial work created by the Roman Baroque artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680). The debate surrounding the statue centers on the question: di...

I argue that Part 2 of Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great (1587; published 1590) upends the narrative operations of ekphrasis at work in Part 1 to expose Sir Philip Sidney’s ‘brazen world’...

This article uses eighteenth-century correspondence and daily writing to unpack the complex networks of emotional, artistic, and poetic exchange that surrounded Plas Newydd, the home of the so-call...

Framed by Guillermo del Toro as “a love letter to the cinema,” the academy award-winning feature The Shape of Water (2017) speaks to one of the core debates in film studies: film’s status as a “uni...

This article examines two instances of an analogical construction by which architects living and working outside of Western metropoles are identified as “the Le Corbusier of …”: Shiv Nath Prasad (1...

This article examines cross-national, geographical analogizing through the under-theorized example of an artist colony in Japan nicknamed the “Ikebukuro Montparnasse” (a title coined by the poet Hi...

Abstract The Entwurff einer historischen Architectur (Outline of an Historical Architecture, 1721), by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, architect to the Austrian imperial court, is often seen as a milestone in the literature of architecture, and as the first comparative and universal history of architecture. In part because it has been studied primarily as a work of architectural history, rather

Abstract Agnolo Bronzino performs a visual experiment in Anton Francesco Doni’s I Marmi (Venice, 1552). “Do you see these pigments?” he asks as he shows his palette to a group of Florentine artisans. Bronzino had mentally dismantled a painting by Andrea del Sarto and loaded his palette with those pigments that Sarto would have used. With them, he painted a copy of the Sarto. How was this strange mind

Abstract This article demonstrates the role of the visual arts, alongside literature, in mythologizing Masaniello (d. 1647) as hero and martyr, despite the limited role he played in the so-called “Revolt of Masaniello” (1647–1648). In addition to printed accounts of the revolt in a variety of languages, Masaniello imagery circulated on paper and canvas, in marble and wax. His likeness was illustrated

Abstract Robert Rauschenberg is not usually thought to have had much contact with Surrealism and even spoke openly about his disdain for the movement on some occasions. However, through the period 1958–69, the Surrealists showed great enthusiasm for the ‘poetic’, ‘metaphorical’ resonance of Rauschenberg’s work, a positive response that has since largely been lost. In place of that history, the interpretation

Abstract This article focuses on the botanical specimens and their symbolic purpose in the narrative of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499). It examines the questions as to why certain plants are positioned at certain narrative stages, and how the relationship between their aesthetic, medical, literary, and symbolic purpose fits with the narrative. It also examines how this ratiocination of reflecting

Abstract The heroine of Germaine de Staël’s Corinne, or Italy (1807) makes her first appearance in the novel ‘dressed like Domenichino’s Sibyl’, wearing an Indian shawl wound into a turban. The aim of this essay is to highlight the contribution that the tradition of Sibylline iconography made to the characterization of the heroine of Corinne by locating Staël in a long line of artists, writers, and

Abstract Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, which contains an account of the origins of painting, offered sixteenth-century European artists a gift as they struggled to advance the status of painting as an intellectual rather than a mechanical art. The Roman authority was also read by Indigenous intellectuals in New Spain; they described their autochthonous painting practice in an account written in

Published in Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry (Vol. 39, No. 1, 2023)

Abstract The Christogram, the sign combining the letters chi with a rho, an iota, or a cross, became extremely common in Early Christian art, in both the East and the West, where it was freighted with multiple and overlapping meanings, whether theological, imperial, or both. The Christogram’s capacity to create meaning through letters and words was elaborated upon in later medieval art in the West

Abstract Writing in gold has almost completely escaped the attention of art historical manuscript studies. Whereas the semantics and the materiality of gold used in works of goldsmithery as well as in illuminations and panel paintings have been frequently discussed, the fact that gold has been also applied to embellish texts, be they single initials and titles or entire chapters and volumes, has drawn

Abstract This article focuses on one of the most intensely ‘graphic’ artefacts produced during the Middle Ages in Western Europe: the so-called Bury St Edmunds Cross or Cloisters Cross. As this fascinating object has been thoroughly studied in many aspects, especially epigraphically, it can seem presumptuous to go back to one of the best-known artefacts of medieval art and epigraphy. This article,

Abstract This paper engages with MS Harley 647 in the British Library, London, a manuscript produced probably at the imperial court in Aachen during the reign of Louis the Pious (814–40 CE), which contains the surviving portion (about four hundred and eighty lines) of Cicero’s Latin translation of the Greek poem Phaenomena, written by Aratus of Soli between 275 and 250 BCE. The poem is a description

Abstract This article explores some of the dynamics related to ekphrasis between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, focusing particularly on the often problematic, but always fruitful, interplay between the object and its description. My interest lies, more specifically, in what has often been called ‘reverse ekphrasis’, that is, the process through which the figurative arts engage in producing an

Abstract Besides their undoubted aesthetic value, monuments possess an ideological function. They are meaningful forms built to commemorate significant deeds or events or to celebrate individuals who are prominent within a community. Monuments become essential for the articulation of cultural identity and memory, through which political powers and intellectual élites seek legitimation and support.

Abstract This article focuses on pectoral crosses, which functioned as relic containers and amulets and were characterized by a blend of figural imagery and inscriptions. Arguably produced between the late eighth and the early ninth centuries, the geographical origins of the crosses are still contested between Byzantium and Rome, while other alternatives have yet to be fully considered. Some of these

Abstract The linguistic and discursive dimensions of art theory and art writing are currently attracting renewed critical attention. This article analyses some of the constructive strategies employed by Erwin Panofsky in shaping his own language, challenging a reductionist understanding of his alleged ‘logocentrism’ and of the verbal and visual as categorically distinct media. I focus mainly on Panofsky’s

Abstract This article investigates how one of the most eminent Byzantinists of the twentieth century, André Grabar (1896–1990), constructed his own methodology in a balanced dialogue between texts and images. At the very core of this study is his monograph L’empereur dans l’art byzantin (1936), which can be seen as emblematic of Grabar’s approach. However, this article investigates not only Grabar’s

Abstract This article interrogates the notion that comics that engage with history do so primarily within the scope of the archive. I argue, instead, that drawing and seeing/reading comics are embodied practices that generate meaning and memory in ways that exceed the discursive logic of the archive. Building on existing scholarship on embodied acts of memory within performance studies, I suggest that

Abstract Emma Stebbins’s untraced statue The Lotus-Eater (c.1857–60) purports to illustrate Alfred Tennyson’s poem of the same title, in turn derived from an episode in the Odyssey of Homer. This essay addresses the tension between Stebbins’s sculpture and Tennyson’s text. It brings to the discussion a body of antique visual and literary material to which Stebbins had access, images of and references

Abstract Late medieval English uroscopy diagrams depict twenty colors of urine in bright, often garish, colors and gold leaf, arranged in correspondence to digestive states. This article argues that the use of color in these diagrams reveals medieval ideas about the perception of color more broadly, and that the images themselves could train practices of comparative looking and visual judgment. Appearing

Abstract The work of Dublin-based painter Lorcan Walshe is particularly concerned with the relationship between inscription in its broadest sense and the visual image. His two related series, The Artefacts Project (2007) and Museum Pieces (2008), engage with Ireland’s precolonial past in search of personal artistic, as well as broader cultural, roots during a period when national narratives were being

Abstract Yves Klein’s conceptual project Theatre of the Void is associated with two well-known works: the single appearance of the newspaper Dimanche, which Klein published on 27 November 1960 with a declaration that the world is voided for twenty-four hours; and the iconic image Leap into the Void, which appears in it for the first time. This article reframes the project—by offering an inclusive,

Abstract Letters written over the course of 1859–60 tell of an effort on Charles Baudelaire’s part to republish Charles Meryon’s Vues sur Paris, augmented with descriptive texts by the poet. The collaboration failed and, ever since, readers have wondered what would have come of it. At the same time, Baudelaire was “courting” Victor Hugo, sending him new and not-quite-new poems dedicated to him. At

Abstract The work of the British poet Christopher Logue is characterized by variation, collaboration, and intermedia projects. His output includes poetry set to jazz, printed poster-poems, public poetry performances, film scripts, collaborations with artists, and translations from Portuguese, German and, most significantly, ancient Greek. War Music, an ‘account of Homer’s Iliad’ according to its subtitle

Abstract In the Middle Ages, the image of a sunbeam passing through glass or crystal was a popular metaphor for explaining Mary’s perpetual virginity. One of the most frequently repeated quotations that employs this metaphor has long been attributed to the twelfth-century Cistercian abbot St Bernard of Clairvaux, which might suggest that the emergent Gothic style contributed to its contemporaneous

Abstract In medieval Greek manuscripts, scribes often compared their completion of the transcription of a codex to a ship reaching a harbor. Scholars have noted that this nautical imagery shaped how poets conceptualized their work as authors, but the harbor metaphor also carried over to metaliterary and ekphrastic passages theorizing the affect of images and the built environment. Thus, a technical

Abstract Historians of Renaissance art have long been familiar with Giovanni Aurelio Augurello’s interest in painting and sculpture, while historians of alchemy are aware of his lifelong dedication to the gold-making art immortalized in his masterpiece, Chrysopoeia (1515). Yet the problem of how these interests intersect in the poet’s work has either been disregarded or framed within outdated categories

Abstract Can a writer be considered a visual humorist? If words are the writer’s primary material, can they be bent into caricatural or grotesque formations? Through what filters must words be processed or mediated for comic pictures to emerge? This article seeks to answer these questions by focusing on an understudied short story that Mark Twain wrote in Florence, Italy: “Italian Without a Master

Abstract This study attends to the historical dimensions of the Mexica (or “Aztec”) festival known as the New Fire Ceremony, a ritual that took place every fifty-two years in pre-Columbian central Mexico. The New Fire Ceremony is most often discussed in terms of cosmic renewal and calendrical cycles. This article seeks to situate its cyclically recurring rites within the web of Mexican history, as

Abstract The participation of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus in the imperial triumph of 71 CE at Rome, following the subjugation of Judaea, is a matter of debate; but his account in the Bellum Judaicum along with the relief on the interior south wall of the Arch of Titus document the event for posterity. While Josephus wrote immediately following the Flavian triumph, the completion of the monument

Abstract In 1992, Anne Carson published Short Talks, her first book of poetry. According to her, the book was initially conceived as a collection of drawings. In the process of its being creafted, however, the titles for these drawings gradually expanded until they became forty-five prose poems that ended up displacing the drawings from the final publication. Such displacement not only marked the beginning

Abstract One of South America’s most popular poets, Alfonsina Storni is primarily known for verses of love and passion. During her lifetime, Storni also wrote as a newspaper columnist under the pseudonym Tao Lao. Storni’s association with film has primarily been discussed as part of her friendship with author and cinephile Horacio Quiroga but translations and analyses of Storni’s film-poems, mainly

Abstract Bakemonogatari (Monster Story) is a 2009 television anime (Japanese animation) produced by Studio Shaft and directed by Shinbō Akiyuki. To the plot and clever dialogue of the novels on which the show is based, the anime adds several striking filmic elements which create an entirely new layer of expression. Most notable among these elements is the profuse and reflexive use of text on the screen

Abstract Le présent article expose comment les discours sur l’art de la deuxième moitié du XVIIIe siècle édifièrent une conception canonique du pastel. Offrant un cadre conceptuel qui historicise la notion de spécificité des médiums, il détaille les propriétés que les écrits techniques, critiques et encyclopédiques attribuèrent au pastel autour des années 1750–1790. À la fois exploration méthodologique

Abstract In 1912, Wassily Kandinsky (Russian, 1866–1944) published a limited edition of Sounds (Klänge), an illustrated book of poems that applied many of the theories discussed in his publication On the Spiritual in Art (Über das Geistige in der Kunst, 1911). In Sounds, Kandinsky strove to train readers to sensorially perceive images hidden in visual and verbal abstraction. In both word and image

Abstract At the turn of the fifteenth century, architectural ethics acquired renewed prominence in England. A long-established discourse that had been developed by major figures in Europe’s intellectual history, and that threatened to reject all but the most utilitarian church-building projects, was given new energy, as well as a new English vocabulary and a newly extensive application, in heretical

Abstract After the Early Christian period, the practice of depicting Christ’s chest stigma on the right-hand side of his upper torso was an established component of stigmata iconography. Thereafter, this tradition was consistently followed in painted images of stigmatic saints—most notably in representations of St Francis of Assisi. St Catherine of Siena (1357–80) also bore the stigmata, and when her

Abstract In 1855, the Pre-Raphaelite artist–poet Elizabeth Siddal was invited to examine John Ruskin’s collection of medieval manuscripts. Two years later, a manuscript—a Book of Hours, the popular late medieval prayer-book—appeared in Siddal’s painting Clerk Saunders. Siddal’s decision to include a Book of Hours in a scene from a medieval ballad encourages us to explore the painting’s creative strategies

Abstract This article addresses the experimental Detroit-based publisher known as the Alternative Press, which published eccentric works of art and poetry—in the form of bumper stickers and postcards, among other useful objects—between 1969 and 1999. While the Alternative Press is largely unknown to scholars, this article traces its influences on poets, including Victor Hernández Cruz, Robert Creeley