Writing for the Eyes from Antiquity to the Renaissance

Exhibition curated by Professor Frederick de Armas and Rafaela Fiore Urizar.

Interactions between the visual and verbal arts are explored in this exhibition of illustrated texts that contain descriptions of actual or imagined works of art. The term, ekphrasis, refers to verbal representations of visual objects. Focusing on illustrated editions of ekphrastic texts, "Writing for the Eyes" examines how the experience of readers and the intentions of authors are transformed when descriptions of works of art are presented alongside depictions of them. A related exhibition, "The Painted Text: Picturing Narrative in European Art," on view at the Smart Museum of Art, surveys relationships between literature and the visual arts through paintings based on narrative stories from literature.

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