Page - 20 - in Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, Volume LIX

aSSAF PINKUS20 scene by Meyer Schapiro saw in it a supreme achievement in representing the sublimation of the human and the divine, this ignored com- pletely the intimate erotic momentum of the two male protagonists.51 Even Schwarz in his brilliant analysis of Christ’s gaze as the primum mobile of the narrative sequence and vitality, avoided dis- cussion of this eroticism.52 Giotto, however, has formulated this moment by using two orifices of the body: the eye and the mouth, evoking the same practices as in the scene of the Annuncia- tion to St. Anne: the Word and the Sight; hear- ing and seeing. The implied eroticism in the Annunciation to St. Anne, together with the interior-exterior play by which the viewer is invited to peer into St. Anne’s room, differs fundamentally from the con- ventions that predated Giotto’s painting, and can be called voyeuristic in the Freudian sense in that it involves a protagonist who obtains temporary mastery and control over what he sees. Moreo- ver, it is inseparable from what Freud defined as the instinct for seeing, the instinct for mastery, and its sequel – the instinct for knowledge.53 St. Anne’s chamber thus appears to evoke a ‘voyeur- istic invitation’ to both the inner and outer pic- torial participants. Drawing an analogy between the spectator and the maid, the viewer, as an alien participant, is invited to gaze into a domestic inti- mate event. Like the maid who is eavesdropping, the viewer is invited to an ocular peering. It is intriguing that just as nowadays ocular voyeurism is often supplemented by ‘aural peep- ing’, the rise of late medieval visual voyeurism seems to have followed the first legislative formu- lation of the sacrament of the confession at the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215, stating that every individual must confess at least once a year.54 This legislation, as noted by Michel Foucault, constituted a regulated voyeuristic practice that was swiftly seized upon by other fields of medi- eval culture.55 The confessional practices initi- ated after the Lateran Council seem to provide an additional interpretive framework to Giotto’s interior-exterior play, and the mechanism of inclusion and exclusion of the viewers through voyeuristic devices. Late medieval confession included interrogation techniques with which the confessor and the penitent arrived in a con- joined process at a true picture of the penitents’ feelings and the nature of their sins.56 Just as in a surgical and healing procedure, the penitent sinner is obliged to expose his naked soul, while the confessor is committed to delving into the recesses of the penitent’s mind. The Confessionale, written around 1300 by the Franciscan Marchesi- nus of Regio Lepide, considers the proper setting for the confession.57 Medieval confession was certainly less private than expected before the development of the confessional booth in the sixteenth century. Though the contents in the confession had to remain confidential, medieval confession was performed in a public domain, exposed to the random gaze of the congrega- tion.58 Confessions occurred in public places where both confessor and penitent could be seen 51 See his fundamental study, M. Schapiro, On the Literal and the Symbolic in the Illustration of a Text, in: Words, Script, and Pictures: Semiotics of Visual Language, New York 1996, pp. 11–24. 52 Schwarz, Giottus Pictor (cit. n. 13), pp. 119–122. 53 Freud, Instincts and their Vicissitudes (cit. n. 24), vol. 14, pp. 109–140; idem, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexual- ity, in: ibidem, vol. 7, pp. 123–245. esp. p. 194. 54 See Fourth Lateran Council, canon 21. 55 M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, trans. R. Hurley, New York 1986, vol. I, pp. 58–64. 56 On seeing and hearing in the medieval confession, see Denery, Seeing and Being Seen (cit. n. 1), p. 45. 57 Marchesinus Of Regio Lepide, Confessionale, chapter I, particular I in: Bonaventure, Opera omnia, Paris Vivès 1868, vol. 7, pp. 359–392. 58 Denery, Seeing and Being Seen (cit. n. 1), p. 57.