Early modern artists and thinkers were fond of the Latin phrase ut pictura poesis, which means “as in painting, so in poetry,” and the two art forms were widely considered in relation to one another. Leonardo da Vinci, for example, wrote that “painting is a poem that is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting that is heard and not seen,” and Ben Jonson argued that “both are busy about imitation.” This course will test the validity of these claims and explore the strategies by which visual artists and poets sought to represent the world during the early modern period. Do painters and poets engage the same strategies of representation? Do they interpret the world in similar ways? And what modes of interpretation do paintings and poems require from viewers and readers?
