How to Describe a Painting
Philostratus and Art Criticism in the Graeco-Roman World
Will be published approx. on 30. September 2026
Book
Hardback
750 pages
978-1-009-32007-8 (ISBN)
Description
How should we talk about material objects, especially the virtual two-dimensional impressions of painting? A particularly sophisticated answer is provided by Philostratus' Imagines, one of the world's earliest and greatest works of art criticism. Jas Elsner and Michael Squire situate this Imperial Greek text in its various 'Second Sophistic' contexts, especially in relation to Graeco-Roman traditions of image-making, aesthetics, rhetoric and the evocation of visual impressions (so-called 'ecphrasis'). They also champion its extraordinarily rich significance for anyone interested in perception, subjective imagination and the emotional leverage of art. If the Imagines remains unsurpassed as one of the western tradition's most creatively original, scintillating and self-reflexive works of art criticism, Elsner and Squire argue, its relevance is also pressingly contemporary: there are modern lessons to be learnt from this ancient project of educating the young - lessons that have a particular urgency in our own dawning digital age.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Illustrations
Worked examples or Exercises; 50 Halftones, color
Weight
1336 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-009-32007-8 (9781009320078)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Jas Elsner is Humfry Payne Senior Research Fellow in Classical Art and Archaeology at Corpus Christi College and Professor of Late Antique Art in the University of Oxford. He is also Visiting Professor of Art and Religion at the University of Chicago and (since 2019) a member of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft at the Kunsthistorisches Institut at Florence. He has published widely on Graeco-Roman art, comparative art history and the history of religion, and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2015. Michael Squire holds the Laurence Chair of Classical Archaeology at the University of Cambridge, where he is a Fellow of Trinity College. His research interests encompass the literary and visual cultures of classical antiquity, as well as the reception of ancient art and the history of aesthetics (especially in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Germany). He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2022.
Content
Introduction: Philostratus' Imagines and the art of description; Part I. Entering the Gallery: Introduction;1. 'Whoever Does Not Salute Painting...': the prefatory frame of the proem; 2. The flow of Homeric poetry and painting: beginning with Scamander; Part II. Paideia: Defining culture and educating the young: Introduction; 3. Paideia and pedagogy: the ends and means of education; 4. Sophistic Paideia: performing Sophia in the Imagines; 5. The positionalities of Paideia: culture and its creative critique; Part III. Silent Poetry, Speaking Pictures: Introduction; 6. Seeing through hearing: the Literary and rhetorical archaeology of ekphrasis; 7. Hearing through seeing: painting talks back; 8. Frame and rhetoric: figurations of contemporary visual culture; Part IV. Philostratean Themes in the Imagines: Introduction; 9. Divine mediations: Religion in the Imagines; 10. The look of the eye: replications of the gaze; Coda: the Imagines in the digital age.