Norman Bryson's use of the anecdote about the contest between the Greek painters is indicative both of the relationship of the study of ancient art and the method of semiotics and of the functioning of semiotics more generally. Bryson's summoning of an ancient analogy for his argument is rather exceptional in semiotics studies: in contrast to iconology, the field of semiotics exists quite happily without reference to, or reverence for, antiquity. Semiotics does not require the legitimatisation Panofsky had sought by enlisting antiquity as a passepartout, for the simple reason that it lacks any investment in a single, irrefutable truth – the search for which is at the heart of iconology.

More crucially, the anecdote throws into relief the problems that arise from this disinvestment from truth for the study of ancient art and art more generally. On the surface, Bryson employs the anecdote to argue that no such thing as a natural attitude exists, a claim that is central to the turning away from the concept of a single truth. But dig deeper and Pliny's anecdote highlights how the methodological framework of semiotics raises the stakes for interpretation: we have only Pliny's word for both the contest and the pictures involved in it. Our relationship to a picture is therefore analogous to that which exists between what Zeuxis thinks he sees – a curtain – and what Parrhasius actually shows him – the representation of a curtain.