The topic of ecphrasis has attracted much attention of late in classical studies, resulting in a rich and sophisticated, as well as imposing and unwieldy, body of scholarship. N.'s monograph makes at best a modest and oblique contribution to this challenging field. It should be noted at the outset that the title is likely to mislead potential readers. This is not really a book about ecphrasis as such, and most of the volume is not specifically concerned with Ovid's epic. The Metamorphoses do not become the object of N.'s analysis until the final two chapters, and only the first of these deals with ecphrasis proper. The lengthy preliminaries to the Ovidian material may reflect the origins of the monograph in a dissertation. At the same time, it should be noted that there is a decided shortage of ecphrasis in the Metamorphoses, at least as N. defines the term. In fact, her definition admits only three instances: the doors of the Palace of the Sun at 2.1–18; the tapestries of Minerva and Arachne at 6.53–128; and the crater of Anius at 13.685–701. While Ovidian scholars have frequently discussed these passages individually – the Arachne episode in particular has been a touchstone for metaliterary and metageneric analysis over the last several decades – N. is right to point out that comprehensive investigations of Ovidian ecphrasis are much rarer.

That said, there are, as we have already hinted, good grounds for not seeing this monograph as fully committed to the study of Ovidian ecphrasis. Doubts arise not just from the balance of chapter headings, but also from N.'s articulation of her critical agenda. In the introduction N. makes the programmatic observation that ‘it is [the] emphasis on the power of the human artist and his [sic] interaction and competition with the divine that Ovid seems to explore in his ecphrases’ (p. 3). This is a curious statement given that the first of the epic's three ecphraseis features engraved doors as the product of divine workmanship (Mulciber … caelarat, 2.5–6) located in a divine abode, while the last simply names the vessel's human craftsman (fabricaverat Alcon, 13.683) without mentioning any interaction, agonistic or otherwise, with any divinity. N.'s overarching statement thus properly applies to only one of the three cases under study, that of the Arachne episode in Book 6. The readerly disorientation prompted by this incongruity might be dispelled by bearing in mind that N. has already undercut the volume's title by declaring that its real focus is ‘the poet's portrayal of artists and their work’ (p. 1), of which textual phenomenon the category of ecphrasis is but a modest subset. N.'s fundamental mission, as she goes on to clarify, is to ‘see Ovid in his [artistic] characters’. This agenda becomes manifest in the final chapter, which N. devotes to the episodes of Philomela, Daedalus and Pygmalion – none of which includes an ecphrasis. This interest is of course related to ecphrasis qua description of a work of art, precisely because such passages serve as privileged loci for writers to offer self-reflexive commentary through the trope of mise-en-abyme. For N., ‘Ovid's ecphrases … bring us closer to understanding the poet's own feelings than any other part of his work’ (p. 4). At any event, this preoccupation situates the monograph in a well-established critical movement, as scholars have long noted the presence in the Metamorphoses of artists whose creative procedures, whether ecphrastically treated or not, reflect upon or serve as a doublet for poetic composition.

In addition to an introduction and a substantial conclusion, the volume consists of six chapters, which can be divided into three pairs. The first pair addresses historical and theoretical questions pertinent to N.'s project. Chapter 1, ‘Rhetorical Background’, discusses the origins of ecphrasis as both a genre and a rhetorical exercise. It opens with the declaration that ‘the term ecphrasis is a particularly complicated one, and its history doubly so’ (p. 9). What is missing here is meaningful engagement with R. Webb's influential study of 2009 (Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice), which is cited only once, at the very end of the chapter, on a peripheral matter. This omission continues to be felt as N. goes on to discuss progymnasmata, the trajectory of modern scholarship and other matters that received what many regard as a definitive treatment in Webb's volume. Chapter 2, ‘Some Notes on Theory’, discusses a variety of theoretical questions, including authorial intention and intertextuality. The former is a central concern given N.'s desire to ‘see Ovid in his [artistic] characters’; the latter turns out to be no less critical, as N. will eventually identify as ‘the crux of [her] argument’ that ‘Ovid made heavy use of allusion because he knew that the creations of Homer, Virgil and others had ensured their fame throughout history’ (p. 221). From this it emerges once again that N. is not really interested in ecphrasis qua ecphrasis, nor with visual comparanda or other aspects of interdiscursivity: hers is a self-consciously literary project.

The next pair of chapters provides a diachronic survey of pre-Ovidian ecphrasis. The familiar ‘canonical’ texts are trotted out, with Chapter 3, ‘Early Ecphrasis’, looking at surviving instances of ecphraseis from the archaic and classical periods, starting, of course, with Homer's Shield of Achilles, and Chapter 4, ‘Hellenistic and Beyond’, continuing the survey through the Hellenistic and Roman periods. The goal is ‘to give a well rounded picture of the influences of Ovid's predecessors on his own style’, rather than to offer fresh perspectives on the passages in question.

After slogging through nearly 150 pages of preliminaries, N. at last turns to ecphrasis in the Metamorphoses in Chapter 5, ‘Ovid's Ecphrases’. Her analysis proceeds non-sequentially through the three passages, starting with the Palace of the Sun (pp. 145–59) and then the crater of Anius (pp. 159–66), while the Arachne–Minerva episode is treated last and most elaborately (pp. 166–84). In her analysis of each passage, N. considers first the source(s) for Ovid's version of the myth and then his particular inspiration for the ecphrasis, as far as that can be determined. Discussion of the ecphrastic sequences themselves usefully surveys previous scholarship, but adds little in the way of new insights. Argumentative movements tend to culminate in quotations of earlier (sometimes considerably earlier) scholars, which reinforces the impression that little forward progress is being made.

The final chapter, ‘Episodes of Great Artistic Achievement’, is devoted to the episodes of Philomela, Daedalus and Pygmalion, which N. styles as ‘quasi-ecphrastic’, a term that she borrows from P. Hardie, but uses in a different sense. The analysis is mainly driven by N.'s ambition to ‘see Ovid in his characters’; but individual features and thematic concerns pertinent to ecphrasis are discussed. This is particularly true of the Philomela episode, where N. raises the absence of an ecphrasis in a textual sequence that seems to call for one as demanding an explanation. The explanation proffered, that ‘the whole Philomela episode becomes an ecphrasis’ (p. 195) sits oddly with N.'s preceding emphasis on the importance of speech in the episode.

The volume is lucidly written and well produced, with few typographical errors. Occasional problems arise with the Latin, both in citation of original passages and English translation, but with one or two exceptions (most glaringly on p. 180, where ‘fear the picture’ will not do for rupit pictas … vestes at Met. 6.131) these will not distract the reader for long.