Page - 26 - in Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, Volume LIX

aSSAF PINKUS26 ed to understand the ideological implications and cultural constructions animated by those pictorial cycles of other people’s lives – in our case a cycle related to the childhood of Mary, who, as already noted long ago, is an ultimate other, standing “alone of all her sex”.77 The indoor participants in St. Anne’s house are completely unaware of being eavesdropped on by the maid and watched by the viewer – no external light is penetrating through the artificial aperture, but only through the angel’s window and the open porch, and no figure is to be seen gesticulating or gazing back toward the viewer through the missing wall. For the indoor partici- pants the separating wall is there. Giotto’s master- ful play of spectacle and voyeurism, of interior and exterior, of including and excluding, all imply that his murals indeed constitute a carefully calculated voyeuristic invitation. the devotional image, Hans Belting argues that the ability of devotional images to move or engage the viewer are not dependent on a convincing realistic illusion, see H. Belting, The Image and Its Public in the Middle Ages. Form and Function of Early Painting of the Passion, New Rochelle 1990, pp. 53–54. 77 M. Warner, Alone of all her Sex. The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary, New York 1983. Illustration credits: fig. 1–4: photo: Alinari – fig. 5: Dublin, Trinity College Library – fig: 6 Wolfenbüttel, Herzog- August-Bibliothek – fig: 7: photo: Rmn L’agence photographique.