With this article the authors want to offer a contribution to the development of and reflection on the verbal description of works of art. Verbal description or audio description is a means of translating the visual impression of an object into words. In this paper, the authors emphasize the complexity of hits type of translation. They do this by describing the importance of concepts such as visual intensity and the narrative of the wok of art. They also make a distinction between clear signs and ambivalent signs as possible features of a particular work of art. Finally, they concretize these reflections with four practical examples. The first two examples are descriptions of paintings, one by René Magritte and another by Rik Wouters. In the latter, visual intensity is higher than in the painting by Magritte. The article concludes with two examples of descriptions of sculptures, one by Auguste Rodin and one by Eugène Dodeigne. It is useful to describe sculptures while exploring the object by touch. The tactile dimension of the experience will have consequences for the practice of describing. A good description will then take these tactile sensations into account and will try to establish an intersensorial translation of the art object.