I'm not feeling well, so I thought I'd do something to entertain myself.
Sandro Botticelli has a beautiful painting called The Calumny of Apelles. It is actually a use of Lucian's ekphrasis (the use of detailed description of a work of visual art as a literary device).
Sandro Botticelli has a beautiful painting called The Calumny of Apelles. It is actually a use of Lucian's ekphrasis (the use of detailed description of a work of visual art as a literary device).
In his treatise De Calumnia, Lucian describes a painting that the ancient artist Apelles painted after being the victim of calumny.
This is what the ekphrasis sounds like:
This is what the ekphrasis sounds like:
On the right of it sits Midas with very large ears, extending his hand to Slander (Calumny) while she is still at some distance from him. Near him, on one side, stand two women—Ignorance and Suspicion. On the other side, Slander is coming up, a woman beautiful beyond measure, but full of malignant passion and excitement, evincing as she does fury and wrath by carrying in her left hand a blazing torch and with the other dragging by the hair a young man who stretches out his hands to heaven and calls the gods to witness his innocence. She is conducted by a pale ugly man who has a piercing eye and looks as if he had wasted away in long illness; he represents envy. There are two women in attendance to Slander, one is Fraud and the other Conspiracy. They are followed by a woman dressed in deep mourning, with black clothes all in tatters—she is Repentance. At all events, she is turning back with tears in her eyes and casting a stealthy glance, full of shame, at Truth, who is slowly approaching.
We can assume (actually we know) that Botticelli read the text. And, accordingly, using the literary framework, created his magical, as all Botticelli's, painting.
What I did. I'm too lazy to sign up for Midjourney, so I used the free version of Kandinsky AI image generator instead. I don't understand how to use it very well, of course. But I did a very simple thing: I loaded the text from Lucian into the prompt.
Well, we assume that Botticelli just read the text and comprehended it. So the AI also just read the text and made sense of it as best he could.
It might not be fair, but it's funny…
What I did. I'm too lazy to sign up for Midjourney, so I used the free version of Kandinsky AI image generator instead. I don't understand how to use it very well, of course. But I did a very simple thing: I loaded the text from Lucian into the prompt.
Well, we assume that Botticelli just read the text and comprehended it. So the AI also just read the text and made sense of it as best he could.
It might not be fair, but it's funny…
Looking at the resulting picture, it seems to me that there are more Dutch paintings on the Internet than Italian ones.
Asked him to remove the crowd in the background and the buildings... Apparently, did his best (sarcasm)…
Asked him to remove the crowd in the background and the buildings... Apparently, did his best (sarcasm)…
Фото
(1) Sandro Botticelli. The Calumny of Apelles.1495. © Uffizi Galleries
(2-3)AI Kandinsky. The Calumny of Apelles. March 29th 2025…
(1) Sandro Botticelli. The Calumny of Apelles.1495. © Uffizi Galleries
(2-3)AI Kandinsky. The Calumny of Apelles. March 29th 2025…
