For thirty years a man looks at a picture of the Vienna Museum to find the fatal mistake that necessarily marks every work of art. His obsessive contemplation is observed by a friend, while their looks fall into the visual field of the museum keeper. This is the plot of one of the most beautiful novels by Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989), Ancient Masters. Comedy (1986), late and testamentary work, examined by Micaela Latini in order to identify its hidden structure. The book analyzes the look's geometry at the center of the story, leading it to that three prospective points building of writing, typical of the Bernardian narrative. Around the eye that seeks for failure are outlined the force ratios between existence and death, love and hatred, artifice and nature, truth and lies, comedy and tragedy.