Post-Giotto Italian painters added self-awareness to figures but revealed less about them

Evidence

This was how Giotto painted people. They never seemed to be aware that they were being watched. Giotto was the only painter to depict the aura of vulnerability this gave them. It was probably something to do with the era because succeeding generations of Italian painters, the great generations, had always interwoven an awareness of watching eyes in their pictures. It made them less naïve, but they also revealed less. — Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family, 2331

Categorization

• SEED: Giotto’s vulnerability as an essay angle on what self-consciousness costs artists and subjects.