Conjoined Twins in Black and White: The Lives of Millie-Christine McKoy and Daisy and Violet Hilton

In combining evidence from art and poetry, Graham Zanker examines how people viewed and experienced art and how they constructed mental images, asking what one can tell us about the other. Taking the period from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC to 30 BC, Zanker asks how audiences read imagery, to what extent they were supposed to fill in the gaps of knowledge about subject matter and significance, and whether poetic descriptions of how contemporaries read works of art should dictate our reconstruction of modes of viewing. In studying artistic and poetic strategies, he concludes that artists trained the eyes of the poets' and opened them to unprecedented possibilities and effects in viewing and imaging'.