Ojos de Giotto

One of the most curious excerpts of The Divine Comedy comes in the sixteenth canto of the Inferno when Dante addresses the reader and swears on the pages of his own work that what he is about to narrate is true. The creation of evidence through appeals to the reader is something usual in Dante, and something similar happens with one of his most remarkable contemporaries, the painter Giotto di Bondone. In several of the frescoes that have been preserved by his hand, the artist depicts a space of transcendent evidence through odd games of glances between the characters, but also calling upon the participation of the observer of the work and of his own eyes. Both Dante and Giotto, each in their own way, convey through their work a concern that will be the hallmark of modernity: the need to produce evidence.