Page - 13 - in Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, Volume LIX

VOYEURISTIC stimuli 13 Giotto’s device, in concurrently evoking the ocular curiosity of the viewers on the one hand, and distancing them on the other, has been recently thoroughly discussed by Michael Viktor Schwarz.23 In the other panels of the Arena cycle, Giotto uses several kinds of perspective appara- tuses (worm’s-eye-view, central projection and, more rarely, bird’s-eye-view), creating thereby several levels of communication with the view- ers, in which the visual field that is available to them constantly changes. In addition, even when he opens up the event entirely to the eye of the viewers, either by bringing the protagonist to the first plane of the picture (as for example in the Lamentation), stretching the architectural openings to the edges of the format (Pentecost and Marriage in Cana, fig. 3), or both (Mocking of Christ), he locates several figures, seen from behind, in a quasi worm’s-eye-view that dis- tances the viewers from the happening; we are peering into the sacred history via a framework of their backs. In the Presentation of the Vir- gin in the Temple two conspiring figures on the left, and Joachim’s servant who is bowed down 3: Giotto, Marriage in Cana, 1303–1307, fresco, Padua, Capella degli Scrovegni 23 Schwarz, Giottus Pictor (cit. n. 13), pp. 95–132.