Book contents
- Calvin and Perception in Early Modern Visual Culture
- Calvin and Perception in Early Modern Visual Culture
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 How to See in Early Modern Europe
- 2 True Spectatorship
- 3 Blind Idolatry
- 4 Corrective Lenses
- 5 Reforming Perception
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - True Spectatorship
Accommodation, Piety, and the Institutes’ Perceptual Ideal
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 June 2026
Book contents
- Calvin and Perception in Early Modern Visual Culture
- Calvin and Perception in Early Modern Visual Culture
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 How to See in Early Modern Europe
- 2 True Spectatorship
- 3 Blind Idolatry
- 4 Corrective Lenses
- 5 Reforming Perception
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
By recovering the physiological and affective assumptions behind early modern artistic and dramatic spectatorship, this chapter lays out the Institutes’ perceptual ideal – a condition in which humans encounter God’s fatherly stance through their senses and imagination before conscious thought can even occur. This discussion reveals that the pre-conscious, evaluative dimension of perception as it was understood by early modern Europeans provides a plausible mechanism for how sensible accommodations such as creation, the sacraments, and scripture might be expected to directly elicit the immediate, pre-rational, affective orientation Calvin calls piety.
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- Calvin and Perception in Early Modern Visual Culture , pp. 77 - 125Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2026
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