Page - 9 - in Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, Volume LIX

VOYEURISTIC stimuli 9 tatio Dei,8 alongside the acknowledgment that sensation is the foundation of cognition and a precondition of scientific knowledge,9 trig- gered the purview of late medieval visuality and enhanced the role of seeing as access to divine truth, both in artistic and devotional practices. The plethora of verisimilitude representations characterizing the late medieval visual arts has been frequently labeled ‘naturalistic’ or ‘realistic’ – a terminology inherited from modernistic cata- loguing practice and a self-reflexive art historical discourse. While the reasons behind the transi- tion to this so-called realism have often been dis- puted, no scholar has ever challenged the appli- cability of this term to fourteenth-century art. In the present article, however, I seek to introduce an alternative approach and term to use, with the intent to re-contextualize this artistic phenom- enon within its cultural milieu. I suggest that the innovative fourteenth-century pictorial realm originated in a specific contemporary practice of watching that can be defined as ‘voyeurism’: the use of revealing images of others’ apparently real and private lives in elaborate pictorial cycles, re presented by means of peering devices. In this context, the term does not refer to the narrow meaning of voyeurism as a sexual deviation but, rather, to its broader cultural and social con- texts, which involve curiosity, peering, violation of privacy, the desire for knowledge and the like. Unlike the adjectives ‘naturalistic’ and ‘realistic’, which are pseudo-neutral classification criteria, voyeuristic (imagery) evokes an epistemology that needs to be oriented in late medieval culture. A full survey of late medieval voyeurism, however, is beyond the scope of this article and demands a comprehensive study of its own. I confine myself here to outlining a preliminary condition of the voyeuristic experience in art – that of the voyeuristic gaze.10 As a case in point I will refer to a much studied pair of works of the early tre- cento, Giotto’s Annunciation to St. Anne and the Birth of the Virgin, both in the Arena Chapel, which will serve as a springboard to defining visual voyeuristic devices and their appeal to the viewers.11 Having outlined these ‘voyeuristic invi- tations’ from their formalist aspects, I will then examine the role of voyeurism in several arenas: Franciscan treaties on optics; the popular Medita- tions on the Life of Christ; confession and prayer practices; hagiography; and secular love tales. Each case will be discussed from several main axes: inclusion versus exclusion; hearing versus seeing; spectacle versus voyeurism. Finally, I will attempt to show that the contradictory qualities inherent in Giotto’s painting are the outcome of his precise mastery of the logic of the voyeuristic gaze. Giotto’s illustrations of interior religious scenes are remarkable for the many images of an entire building as a freestanding monument in 8 Franciscan piety, with its emphasis on emotional and individual spirituality, the Devotio Moderna, and the vision- ary tradition, all encourage a visual participation in sacred history. See for example V. Moleta, From St. Francis to Giotto. The Influence of St. Francis on Early Italian Art and Literature, Chicago 1983; D. L. Jeffrey, Franciscan Spirituality and the Growth of Vernacular Culture, in: D. L. Jeffrey (ed.), By Things Seen. Reference and Recog- nition in Medieval Thought, Ottawa 1979, pp. 143–159. The imitatio Christi was not necessarily mimetic in visual terms, but rather in a metaphorical sense. Robert Grosseteste’s and Roger Bacon’s optics will be discussed below. 9 For example, William of Ockham’s nominalism and his belief in intellective cognition based on intuition, see A. Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination. From the Middle Ages to the 17th Century, Princeton 1986, pp. 139, 185–186. 10 For an excellent introduction to the role of the gaze in late medieval devotion, see T. Lentes, ‘As far as the eye can see …’. Rituals of Gazing in the Late Middle Ages, in: J. F. Hamburger/A. M. Bouché (eds), The Mind’s Eye. Art and Theological Argument in the Middle Ages, Princeton 2006, pp. 360–373; P. Springer, Voyeurismus in der Kunst, Berlin 2008, pp. 37–70. 11 By addressing these works I intend neither to unravel, undermine, nor deny the richness of the stylistic discourse inspired by the innovativeness of Giotto’s work, but rather to provide it with a complementary approach.