How to Describe a Painting

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.