EN
The article starts with an examination of the question of understanding a painting presented in Balzac's story 'Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu'. The author shows similarities and differences between the vision of the painting presented in Balzac's legendary text and its film adaptation in Jacques Rivette's 'La Belle Noiseuse'. He focuses on the rhetoric of the conversation on the ontology of image contained in the painting, and the consequences of such understanding on the purposes and nature of art as a whole.