WORD-PAINTER • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Word-painter

... message and meaning enough in his allegorical presentation of the perennial quest, of "the way of a man with a maid," and more than enough beauty in the pictures with which he has adorned it. He is indeed the first great word-painter of the Middle Ages, and for long—almost to the close of them—most poets simply copied him, while even the greatest used him as a starting-point and source of hints.[148] Also besides pictures he has music—music not very brilliant or varied, but admirably ...

— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury