EN
In The Rape of Lucrece, the Shakespearean heroine admires a wall-painting illustrating a scene from the Trojan War. The two hundred lines of the poem in which Lucrece describes the ancient characters involved in the war represent a remarkable piece of ekphrastic transposition. It produces a vivid effect in the poem’s narrative, draws attention to the power of ekphrasis in guiding the reader’s interpretation, and represents an unrivalled example of embedded ekphrasis, unique in Renaissance poetry.