Some high, some low-the painter was so nice. The scalps of many, almost hid behind, To jump up higher seemed, to mock the mind. Here one man's hand leaned on another's head, His nose being shadowed by his neighbor's ear; For much imaginary work was there; Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind, That for Achilles' image stood his spear Griped in an armed hand; himself behind Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind: A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head Stood for the whole to be imagined. (Emphasis added, William Shakespeare, Lucrece lines 1412-28 in Fairchild, 139-47) In this illustrative ekphrasis, Shakespeare translates into words not just the painting but also what it might suggest intuitively, emotionally, intellectually, and technically. As Leonard Barkan puts it: "It is Shakespeare, interestingly enough, who goes further in the Troy painting that occupies Lucrece's tormented thoughts; he actually refers to technical details, for instance in the depiction of a crowd scene" (Barkan, 330). There is here a great deal of awareness of what the body's eye views, as reflected in the technical jargon of the verses, denoting shapes, masses, angles, spaces, dimensions, and positions. Hence, poetry and painting share visual dimensions. The poet, however, is a head of the painter in the ability to explicate, to use 'the eye of the mind ... for the whole to be imagined'. Nonetheless, this particular kind of ekphrasis, of the illustrative type, is not exclusive of poetry's incorporation of the visual. Literary pictorialism is far more visual and cognitive than it appears in this particular case.
