The Parallel Worlds of Classical Art and Text

Book excerpt: Considering the relationship between artists and texts throughout classical antiquity, this study systematically applies new and objective criteria to judge the fidelity between picture and text. It becomes clear that artists illustrate stories, not texts, and Jocelyn Penny Small argues that artistic transmissions follow the model of oral, not textual, transmission where the variant rules and there is no original. Pictures on vases, she demonstrates, should not be used to reconstruct lost literary works.