Peasant Wedding c. 1568; Oil on wood, 114 x 164 cm (45 x 64 1/2 in); Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

1. Peasant Wedding c. 1568; Oil on wood, 114 x 164 cm (45 x 64 1/2 in); Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

2. Art and Poetry

3. Art Ever since the Roman poet Horace set down in his ArsPoetica (c. 13 BC) the dictum "utpicturapoesis"--"as is painting, so is poetry"--the two arts have been put [together]. Poets and painters sometimes turn to one another for inspiration. Painters and illustrators have often been inspired by literature, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The critic Richard Altick says, for example, that between 1760 and 1900 there existed around 2,300 paintings based on Shakespeare's plays alone. These Shakespeare paintings are only one-fifth of the 11,500 paintings on subjects and scenes from literature--and we are talking only about paintings done in England during those years! Numbers indicate the influence of authors on artists.

4. Questions Asked: • Is the poem simply a verbal description of the work of art, or does the poet make conclusions about what the painting means? • Could you reconstruct the painting from the poem without actually seeing it? • Why does the poet dwell on some features of the painting and ignore other aspects of the picture? • Do you agree with the meaning the poet "reads" in the painting, or do you think the writer misreads it or warps the scene depicted to personal ends?

8. Which Comes First? • What is the difference when you see the painting and then write a poem? • What did you focus on when you wrote the poem? • Did you tell a story? • Describe the picture? • What did you like about writing a poem based on a painting? OR • What didn’t you like about writing a poem based on a painting?