Ekphrasis: The Literary Description of Visual Artworks From Homer to Auden

In Book 18 of the Iliad, Homer describes the shield that the god Hephaestus forges for Achilles. The description goes on for over 130 lines. It covers the earth, the sky, the sea, cities at peace and at war, plowed fields, vineyards, dancing floors, and the constellations. No actual shield could contain all of this. Homer knew that. He was not describing a real object. He was doing something else, something that would become one of the oldest and most persistent bridges between literature and the visual arts. He was writing ekphrasis.

Ekphrasis is the literary description of a visual artwork. The word comes from the Greek "ek" (out of) and "phrasis" (speech or expression), and it originally meant any vivid description. Over time, particularly in the 19th and 20th centuries, the term narrowed to mean specifically the description of works of visual art in literature, most often poetry. The Academy of American Poets defines it as "a direct transcription from the Greek" that has been "limited, first, to visual description and then even more specifically to the description of a real or imagined work of visual art." Read the full essay at Academy of American Poets.

This entry covers what ekphrasis is, its history from ancient Greece to the present, key examples in poetry and prose, and why it matters as a way of thinking about the relationship between words and images.

What Is Ekphrasis?

Ekphrasis is a verbal representation of a visual representation. It is what happens when a writer takes a painting, sculpture, photograph, or other visual artwork and translates it into language. The simplest form is description: the writer tells the reader what the artwork depicts. But the most interesting ekphrastic works go further. They interpret, inhabit, confront, or speak to the artwork. They use the visual work as a starting point for something that neither the artwork alone nor the poem alone could accomplish.

Theodore Ziolkowski, in a study published in the journal Arion, distinguishes between different modes of ekphrasis by examining three poems that all take classical artworks as their subjects: Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1819), Leconte de Lisle's "Venus de Milo" (1846), and Rilke's "Archaic Torso of Apollo" (1908). Despite their shared subject matter, the three poems display "conspicuous and typical differences in approach and treatment that reflect significant cultural developments." Read the study at Project MUSE.

John Hollander, in his collection The Gazer's Spirit, described the various ways modern poets have faced works of art: "addressing the image, making it speak, speaking of it interpretively, meditating upon the moment of viewing it, and so forth." Ekphrasis is not a single technique. It is a category of literary engagement with visual art that encompasses description, interpretation, narration, and dialogue.

Historical Development

Ancient Greece and Rome

The earliest and most famous example of ekphrasis is Homer's description of the shield of Achilles in the Iliad (Book 18, lines 483-608). The shield is described in elaborate detail, with low-relief sculpture depicting constellations, cities, pastures, and dancing. Critics have noted that no actual shield could contain all the elements Homer describes, which is precisely the point. Ekphrasis from its origins was not about accurate description of a real object. It was about using the imagined object as a vehicle for literary creation.

Homer's description was imitated by Hesiod in his description of Heracles's shield, by Virgil describing Aeneas's shield in the Aeneid (Book VIII), and by Nonnus describing Dionysus's shield. These are all descriptions of imagined objects, not real ones. The ekphrastic tradition begins with fiction.

Another notable ancient example occurs in Canto X of Dante's Purgatorio, where the pilgrim poet describes low-relief sculptures in white marble carved on the side of the mountain of Purgatory. Dante not only describes the carvings but gives the figures dialogue, referring to the result as "visible parlare," visible speaking. A work of visual art has somehow managed to convey speech, and the poet's task is to translate that visual speech back into verbal speech.

The Renaissance to the 18th Century

After the classical period, ekphrasis continued in various forms. Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1590) includes a description of tapestries depicting Jove's amorous exploits. Shakespeare's description of the painting in The Rape of Lucrece is an extended ekphrastic passage. After Milton, as epic-length poems became rarer in English, ekphrasis appeared in shorter poems: Marvell's "The Picture of Little T.C. in a Prospect of Flowers," Keats's "On Seeing the Elgin Marbles," Shelley's "On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery," and Browning's "My Last Duchess."

The 19th Century: Keats and the Romantic Ekphrasis

John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1819) is the most famous ekphrastic poem in English. Keats wrote it after visiting the British Museum, where he encountered Greek antiquities including the Elgin Marbles and the Townley Vase. The urn in the poem is not a specific real urn. It is a composite, assembled from multiple artworks and from Keats's imagination. The poem addresses the urn directly, asks it questions, and meditates on the relationship between art and mortality. Its final lines, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know," are among the most debated in English poetry.

The Poetry Foundation notes that Keats "rendered the urn of his poem, one of six odes, out of many influences, including his friend Benjamin Haydon's articles on art of antiquity, and from several artworks: the Elgin Marbles, the Townley Vase, Claude Lorrain's paintings, and the Neo-Attic Sosibios vase." Read the full analysis at Poetry Foundation.

The 20th Century: Auden, Williams, and Modern Ekphrasis

In the 20th century, ekphrastic poetry shifted from description to interpretation and confrontation. W. H. Auden's "Musee des Beaux Arts" (1938) is the paradigmatic modern ekphrastic poem. It describes Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (c. 1560), but instead of simply describing the painting, Auden meditates on its central observation: that human suffering happens while everyday life continues indifferently. "In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away / Quite leisurely from the disaster."

William Carlos Williams wrote his own ekphrastic poem on the same Bruegel painting, "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" (1962), approaching it in a completely different style. The Academy of American Poets notes that "both Auden and William Carlos Williams were inspired to write about Pieter Bruegel the Elder's sixteenth-century masterpiece" and were drawn to "how he played down the death of Icarus and instead emphasized the workaday efforts of the farmer." Read more at Academy of American Poets.

Rilke's "Archaic Torso of Apollo" (1908) is another major modern ekphrastic poem. Rilke does not describe the torso in conventional terms. He addresses it, and by the final line, the artwork addresses him: "You must change your life." The poem demonstrates how modern ekphrasis reverses the direction of description: instead of the poet describing the artwork, the artwork speaks to the poet.

Key Examples of Ekphrasis

Homer's description of the shield of Achilles in the Iliad (c. 8th century BCE) is the origin point of the tradition. Dante's description of the marble reliefs in Purgatorio (c. 1320) introduces the idea of "visible speaking." Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1819) is the most famous English ekphrastic poem, addressing a composite imagined urn. Browning's "My Last Duchess" (1842) is an ekphrastic dramatic monologue about a portrait. Rilke's "Archaic Torso of Apollo" (1908) ends with the artwork commanding the poet to change his life. Auden's "Musee des Beaux Arts" (1938) meditates on Bruegel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. Williams's "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" (1962) offers a contrasting poetic response to the same painting.

Ekphrasis and Related Terms

Ekphrasis sits at the intersection of literature and iconography, the study of visual symbols and meaning in art. It relates to the broader study of still life and portrait as genres that ekphrastic poets frequently address. The concept connects to visual literacy, the ability to interpret and make meaning from visual information, because ekphrasis is fundamentally an act of visual interpretation translated into language. It also relates to semiotics, the study of signs and symbols, since ekphrasis involves translating visual signs into verbal ones.

Why Ekphrasis Matters

Ekphrasis matters because it forces a confrontation between two different modes of representation. Visual art exists in space and presents itself all at once. Language exists in time and unfolds sequentially. When a poet writes about a painting, they must translate a spatial, simultaneous experience into a temporal, sequential one. This translation is never neutral. It always involves interpretation, selection, and transformation. The poet decides what to describe, what to omit, what to emphasize, and what to invent.

The history of ekphrasis also reveals changing assumptions about the relationship between art and language. Homer assumed that description could be more expansive than any real object. Keats assumed that the artwork had something to teach the poet about beauty and truth. Auden assumed that the artwork was a window onto human nature. Rilke assumed that the artwork could speak back. Each generation of ekphrastic writers has discovered a new way for words and images to interact.

To explore ekphrasis yourself, pick a painting that moves you and try writing about it. Not just what it depicts, but what it makes you think about. Start with Bruegel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels, and compare your response to Auden's and Williams's poems. For more on how visual art carries meaning, read our entries on iconography and visual literacy, or explore our guide on how to read a painting to develop the visual analysis skills that ekphrastic writing depends on.