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Great works
Viewer? Voyeur? Visionary? One looks out on to something. Another has hidden secrets. Another is granted a revelation. A picture can provide many dramas.
For example, Vermeer's A Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid shows a woman gazing out of a window. While her lady writes, engrossed, the maid is absent, wholly focused on the daylight outside. Her gaze removes us from the room.
On the other hand, the subject for a voyeur is nearly always visible - imagine Susanna and the Elders by Tintoretto, without Susanna. The men are only there to look at the naked woman, but she, the object, is unaware of this.
But then there is the painting by Caravaggio, The Conversion of St Paul. St Paul is struck to the ground. His arms are open. His eyes are closed. In darkness, Jesus is an implied vision, but nowhere to be seen. All we see is a horse. But some viewers in painting are more puzzling. What are they seeing?
The painter Vittore Carpaccio's own view shows St. Augustine in His Study. His subject is the great North African saint, the Bishop of Hippo, the author of City of God. And first of...