J'ai voulu te dire simplement que je venais de jeter le plan de mon œuvre entier, après avoir trouvé la clef de moi-même, clef de voûte, ou centre de moi-même, où je me tiens comme une araignée sacrée, sur les principaux fils déjà sortis de mon esprit, et à l'aide desquels je tisserai aux points de rencontre de merveilleuses dentelles, que je devine, et qui existent déjà dans le sein de la Beauté.
This paper will examine the central image of Ἱστοί (‘Looms’ or ‘Webs’), that of the web woven by the spider, as a Callimachean expression, or objectification, of the highly self-conscious treatment of art and play with illusion in the Imagines, that is, its play with the interaction of vision and text. In so doing, it will attempt to show in what ways Ἱστοί might be said to describe the artistic process of the work of which it forms a part, and to illuminate, from its context of painting and its ekphrastic oratory, something of the function and structure of ekphrasis itself. It will not be long enough to deal with the wider questions, about mimesis and the definition of ekphrasis, that it will perhaps have invited.