The advent of the photographic existence of the work of art and the ways in which this facilitated new modes of reception have been the subject of a number of recent art historical studies and exhibitions. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a diverse community of writers and intellectuals attempted to grasp the significance of art seen photographically. However, since the reality effects of photography were so powerful, recognition of the impact of photographic mediation remains implicit in many accounts across a range of contemporary sources. This essay examines the impact of the photographic reproduction of the work of art through a case study of two writers, now well known for their reflections on the implications of photographs for memory, subjectivity, aesthetic value, historicism and allegory. It explores Marcel Proust's description of Giotto's Karitas, in particular those references made to its appearance as a photograph in his autobiographical novel. As a member of the first generation to experience habitually the work of art in a photomechanically reproduced state, Proust reveals the shocks involved in these encounters, shocks that institute a new relationship between the viewer and the work of art. Proust's novel is thus read as a counterpart to Walter Benjamin's famous essay of 1936, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility’', in which Benjamin discusses the implications of photographic reproduction for the changing concept of the work of art. Benjamin has been much criticised for factual inaccuracies in his essay, but it is argued here that Proust's interrogation of the experience of the work of art through photography demonstrates some of the qualitative shifts in perception that are at the core of Benjamin's thesis.