The reference to the underlying Horatian commonplace, ut pictura poesis, may appear as lip service to the tools of writing and painting were it not for Lope's conscious, flowing use of enargeia (painterly description) in the Arcadia and Angelica as well as its constantly embellished practice throughout his literary career.

The seven loosely connected chapters meditate on such topics as ut pictura poesis (chapter 2), anamorphosis and optical paradoxes (chapter 3), representations of secrecy such as masks (chapter 4), elements of landscape like gardens, mountains, and caves (chapter 5), reflections in water, mirrors, and echos (chapter 6), and revelations through windows and other openings (chapter 7).

Though one of Turner's achievements is the spectacular derangement of the assumptions of ut pictura poesis, his work is nonetheless inseparable from a ruined, sedimented field of textuality, even when it seems remotest from language.