Ekphrasis

Ekphrasis was designed originally as an exercise of rhetorical skills: its core feature was neither the description itself nor the thing described (which could even be non-existent), but the vividness (enargeia) with which the description appealed to the mind’s eye of the audience. Throughout antiquity up to early modernity, ancient ekphrasis was not linked to specific objects: it could describe paintings or sculptures as well as persons, places, or even specific events such as battles. In the 20th century ekphrasis acquired, thanks mostly to Leo Spitzer, the restricted meaning which is common nowadays among scholars and art critics, namely that of “a poetic description of a pictorial or sculptural work of art”