Antonio Muñoz Molina at The Hudson Review:
Who knows how many times I stood before Carracci’s Venus, Adonis and Cupid without noticing a crucial detail, a tiny mark that holds as in a cipher the meaning of the tale. Perhaps I had not looked as closely as I thought. “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” George Orwell’s remark about our observation of reality can be applied as well to works of art. Until recently, I had never noticed the speck of a red dot on Venus’ golden, shining skin, just on the edge of the small patch of shadow between her breasts, as if a pinprick had left behind a tiny trace of blood. I failed to see it even though the figure of Cupid was pointing from within the painting to where I should look. The picture itself discloses the key to decoding its riddle.
Renaissance painters eagerly pointed out the similarities between painting and poetry, renewing a debate that dates back to antiquity and is encapsulated in a single terse line of Horace: Ut pictura poesis.
more here.