Selected by Dr Oliver Tearle

There is a special term to describe literary depictions of visual works of art: ekphrasis. Poems about pictures or paintings are, and so, ekphrastic poems. Just what are the greatest ekphrastic poems in English literature? Here are ten of the very best examples of ekphrasis from the last couple of centuries.

i. Percy Bysshe Shelley, 'On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery'.

It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky,
Upon the cloudy mountain peak supine;
Below, far lands are seen tremblingly;
Its horror and its beauty are divine.
Upon its lips and eyelids seems to lie
Loveliness like a shadow, from which shrine,
Peppery and lurid, struggling underneath,
The agonies of anguish and of death …

Although the title of this verse form has now been rendered inaccurate (like another painting that is mentioned in this list, the Medusa, nosotros know now, wasn't really painted by Leonardo da Vinci), the verse form itself is a powerful Romantic response to a Renaissance artwork, capturing 'all the beauty and the terror there – / A adult female's countenance, with serpent locks, / Gazing in death on heaven from those moisture rocks.'

2. Robert Browning, 'My Last Duchess'.

That'south my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking equally if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, at present; Fra Pandolf'southward easily
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
'Fra Pandolf' by pattern, for never read
Strangers similar y'all that pictured eyebrow,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance …

In this, one of Browning's most famous dramatic monologues, the Duke of Ferrara speaks to someone about the portrait of his late married woman, his 'last duchess', hanging on the wall. As the Duke talks, he reveals, through discussing the painting, his ain narcissism and the way he was overly protective of his beautiful wife. Did he have her killed, or locked away in a convent? Browning said every bit much himself.

This poem does what Browning's dramatic monologues do all-time: it invites the states into the confidence of a speaker whose conversation reveals more nigh their personality and actions than they realise. We should experience thoroughly uncomfortable when we finish reading the poem for the get-go time, because we accept just heard a human confessing to the murder of his married woman – and, maybe, other wives – without actually confessing.

We have analysed this archetype poem here.

3. Walter de la Mare, 'Brueghel'due south Winter'.

This is the first of 4 poems on this list inspired by a Brueghel painting (although when we get to the other two poems beneath, nosotros'll see that there's some doubt surrounding the attribution of the other Brueghel painting!).

Brueghel's winter scenes are instantly recognisable, and Walter de la Mare captures the cold and crisp snow against the 'skies water ice-dark-green' very finer in this poem.

four. William Carlos Williams, 'Mural with the Fall of Icarus'.

There are two celebrated twentieth-century poems about 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus', a painting (pictured right) long thought to be by Brueghel the Elder (though in fact it may not have been by him at all).

The more famous of the 2 poems is below, just this poem past the American modernist William Carlos Williams too emphasises the fact that Icarus' fall into the sea goes unnoticed past those who are nearby to witness the event.

five. W. H. Auden, 'Musée des Beaux Arts'.

One of the most famous ekphrastic poems in the English linguistic communication, this poem was written in 1938, before long earlier Auden left England for the United states.

Taking the theme of suffering in paintings by the 'Old Masters' as its theme, the verse form homes in on a item painting – the same one supposedly by Brueghel which Williams likewise wrote about above – depicting the fall of Icarus and the indifference of those who witnessed it.

6. Elizabeth Jennings, 'Rembrandt'southward Late Cocky-Portraits'.

Every bit much a verse form about ageing as information technology is an ekphrastic poem, 'Rembrandt'southward Tardily Cocky-Portraits' addresses the Dutch main himself, engaging with the serial of cocky-portraits Rembrandt completed and how they nautical chart the creative person'due south slowly sagging peel and growing self-knowledge (and knowledge of death).

7. May Swenson, 'The Tall Figures of Giacometti'.

A response to the works of the Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti (1901-66), this poem adopts a different approach from the Jennings poem above, giving a vox to the sculptures themselves with their air of 'petrified sainthood'.

8. John Berryman, 'Wintertime Mural'.

Yet another poem on this list inspired by a Brueghel painting, this fourth dimension 'Hunters in the Snowfall', one of the Dutch Chief's virtually famous winter landscapes. The twentieth-century American confessional poet John Berryman chooses to focus on three figures inside the larger landscape, reflecting on how they have been frozen in time and preserved for posterity by the artist, long after they and all of their friends have passed away.

9. Anne Sexton, 'The Starry Night'.

As the championship of this ekphrastic poem suggests, it was inspired by Vincent van Gogh'southward painting Starry Starry Night, but also by a quotation from van Gogh's messages that whenever he feels depression he goes out and paints the stars. A beautiful verse form past a troubled poet responding to the piece of work of another tortured soul.

x. U. A. Fanthorpe, 'Non My Best Side'.

Inspired by Paolo Uccello'south painting St. George and the Dragon, this witty poem sees the subjects of the poem (St George himself, the dragon, and the girl being rescued from the dragon) responding to the creative person, criticising his failure to capture their 'best side'. A tongue-in-cheek tour de force, and a fine poem to conclude our selection of ekphrastic poems.

The author of this commodity, Dr Oliver Tearle, is a literary critic and lecturer in English language at Loughborough Academy. He is the author of, among others,The Undercover Library: A Book-Lovers' Journeying Through Curiosities of History  andThe Corking State of war, The Waste matter Land and the Modernist Long Poem.

Prototype: via Wikimedia Commons.