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Abstract: The given article deals with an issue of arts fusion in Leonov’s works, in particular synthesis of literature and painting. The problem of relation between visual and verbal is investigated; important characteristics of the verbal expression of the visual image are highlighted. At the centre of attention are intertextual poetics issues solved by analyzing the works of Leonid Leonov. The concept of ekphrasis and a quick overview of the term history are introduced. The article includes the term “painting ekphrasis”. The urgency of ekphrasis as an object of literary research is determined. Ways and forms of the painting presence as well as peculiarities of the painting ekphrasis functioning in Leonov’s works and other writers are revealed. An ekphrastic representation of objects of fine art in the literature on the example of Leonov’s prose is presented and painting composition devices are revealed. Leonov is a writer with a pronounced visualization of the worldview and, a poetic word accordingly. The search for common ground between Leonov’s works and the works of Brueghel the Elder, conceptualization of the artistic and spiritual representation and ekphrastic descriptions interpretation of the artist’s paintings in Leonov’s texts are the central problems of this article. According to Leonov, Bruegel’s paintings can be read like a work of literature. He noted the deapth, the polysemy of his paintings, their “literary character”. In addition, this article mentions the works of Giovanni Battista Piranesi — a representative of Western European painting as well as Frans Snyders and other artists of the Flemish painting school of the Baroque period. It is important to emphasize that Leonov’s ekphrasis is not a simple description of the picture, it is more than an ordinary verbal representation of the image. Leonov’s word has a philosophical sense. Leonov creates a verbal and philosophical semiotics of the literary text. The ekphrasis of painting in Leonov’s works is not elements of the artistic space, but they are rather important structural and semantic units of the text that reveal the writer’s philosophical views.