Words for Pictures: Ekphrasis as a Heuristic Tool in Alois Riegl’s Art History

Stefaniia Demchuk
Department of Art History, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3477-1316

Volume 9, October 2025

Abstract

This paper explores the role of ekphrasis, the rhetorical and descriptive practice of translating visual experience into words, as a formative tool in the development of art historical method, focusing on Alois Riegl’s The Origins of Baroque Art in Rome. While ekphrasis has been integral to art writing since antiquity, from Homer to Vasari, its function underwent a profound transformation with the institutionalisation of art history in the nineteenth century. For Riegl, ekphrasis was not merely a narrative or illustrative device but a heuristic mode of analysis, revealing the inner logic of artistic form and the historical shifts in visual perception. The paper situates Riegl’s approach within the broader intellectual and institutional context of the early Vienna School, drawing attention to his engagement with monument preservation (Denkmalpflege), the culture of museums (Sachkultur), and his dialogue with contemporaries such as Heinrich Wölfflin and Wilhelm von Bode. Contrasting Riegl’s precise, almost scientific language with Wölfflin’s suggestive psychologism, the study demonstrates how Riegl’s ekphrases reflect a unique synthesis of phenomenological observation and formal abstraction. His neologisms, such as Nahsicht and Tiefraum, mark his attempt to construct an intermedial vocabulary capable of expressing the perceptual conditions of style. Moreover, the paper argues that Riegl’s descriptions of artworks, especially Michelangelo’s Medici tombs, reveal a subtle psychologism rooted in the opposition between Wille (will) and Empfindung (emotion). In tracing Riegl’s legacy through Hans Sedlmayr the paper highlights how both his unique approach to ekphrasis and his concept of Kunstwollen – understood as a manifestation of collective worldviews – was gradually formalised into a structural method, often at the cost of the psychological nuance embedded in his own ekphrases. Ultimately, Riegl’s writings exemplify how ekphrasis functions as both a linguistic and epistemological bridge between seeing and knowing in art history.

Keywords

Alois Riegl, ekphrasis, Heinrich Wölfflin, Baroque

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