Following upon Jean Starobinski’s work itself, the link between looking (“the living eye”, “transparency”) and textual analysis has often been made. Yet attention to the intimacy of bodily perception, to the field of touch, to the “tactile” value of words, to the body’s movement, widening out from attention to the painter’s suspended moves to the social “gestures” of generosity or invitation, also takes up a large proportion of this work, which is here explored from these perspectives.