This is the first book ever to be written about the relationship between Flauberts writing and pictorial art. Flaubert's responses to a wide range of pictorial images, from classical to popular, were both powerful and ambivalent, with insights, in many instances, of an extraordinary modernity, and intuitions of an art of the future. This study traces the processes by which pictorial art penetrates the very fibre of Flaubert's writing. Viewed by Flaubert as the sister art, pictorial art is for him both rival and foil. This study casts significant new light on the poetic system of a major writer, and adds a new dimension to the study of the literary and aesthetic sensibilities of the mid-nineteenth century.