“Ekphrasis and Formalism in Roberto Longhi” is the first study to tackle the significance of Roberto Longhi’s body of work by combining the categories of ekphrasis, the evocative description of a work of art, and formalism. The book provides a synthetic perspective on Roberto Longhi as an art writer, critic and historian. With translations of texts from Longhi’s critical essays, never before available in English, accompanied by a rigorous philological and stylistic analysis, the book explores Longhi’s technique of providing “verbal equivalences” for the visual experience. Moreover, the volume is the first to consider Longhi in light of the critical and aesthetic movement of formalism, as he was both an experimental writer and a true connoisseur of the artistic form.