| Summary: | In the Imagines, Philostratus the Elder mentions the «paintings (or writings) of Homer» (“Ὁμήρου γραφαί”). He repeatedly opposes them to a set of rival pictures: the paintings that the rhetor explains to his young audience. Several paintings of Philostratus’ gallery thus echo specific passages of the Homeric poems and challenge the mental pictures that the readers would have formed when reading Homer. The passages of the Iliad to which Philostratus has alludes were indeed perceived by ancient scholars as models of enargeia. By alluding to these passages, Philostratus pays hommage to the talent of Homer as a painter, but he also playfully rivals Homer’s “paintings”, by replacing them with his own new pictures.
|
|---|