The equation between the verbal and the visual, most famously and succinctly summed up in the Horatian dictum, Ut pictura poesis, is a well-established topos in the history of art. Comments on the relationship between verbal and visual form abound from all periods, and the Byzantine is no exception. This essay considers the analogy between painting and poetry in the context of the early Byzantine period through an examination of two of Byzantium's most familiar images, the sixth-century mosaic portraits of the emperor Justinian (r. 526–—567) and his consort Theodora (d. 546) in the church of San Vitale, Ravenna.