world. It allows the viewer, like the essayist, to look at the world from a
distance and take in an overview. As the viewer gazes from the proper
position central to the picture plane, he or she gains perspectival mastery
over the painting as a window onto the world before him, even if it is a
private bedroom. The geometry of Bihzad’s painting denies such propriety
to the gaze and thereby does not implicate a human subject as its master.
To enter such an image, the viewer must also always exit it, never lingering
too long in the realm of form, but simply pausing along its passageway to
meaning.
Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife in Post-Reformation Europe 267