The relationship between image and text has been a topic of debate since the Ancient Greek era. Plato considered image as more natural than text, therefore the image is readily understood. Simónides de Ceos has begun the sister arts tradition between image and text, by his phrase ut pictura poesis (as is painting, so is poetry). In contrast to the Ancient Greek, Modern thinkers tend to sharply distinguish between image and text. We can trace modern philosophical discourse on image and text from Leonardo da Vinci’s superiority of painting over poetry, Lessing’s distinction of painting and poetry, Burke’s words as the sublime medium, Clement Greenberg’s and Michael Fried’s medium specificity, to Rosalind Krauss’s grid of modern art. This study examines discourse on image and text relationship in the historical analysis view. Eventually, the researcher attempts to answer the problem of image and text relationship, in the light of contemporary and multimodality theories.

Keywords: Image, Text, Ancient Greek, Modern, Multimodality