Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preliminary Material / W. Melion and L. Palmer Wandel -- Introduction / Lee Palmer Wandel -- The Politics of Light: Al-Kindī’s Geometrical Optics and the Vindication of the American Tropics in Bartolomé de las Casas’s Apologética historia sumaria (1527–1561) / Nicolás Wey Gómez -- A Topographer’s Eye: From Gilles Corrozet To Pieter Apian / Tom Conley -- The Ethnographic Lens In The New World: Staden, De Bry, And The Representation Of The Tupi In Brazil / Neil L. Whitehead -- Depicting Perspective: The Return Of The Gaze In Codex Telleriano-Remensis (C. 1563) / José Rabasa -- John Calvin And Michel De Montaigne On The Eye / Lee Palmer Wandel -- Quel rapport entre un jeu de paume et le roi David ? Analogie et Exégèse Visuelle dans le David et Bethsabée de Herri met de Bles / Michel Weemans -- ‘Quae lecta Canisius offert et spectata diu’: The Pictorial Images in Petrus Canisius’s De Maria Virgine of 1577/1583 / Walter S. Melion -- Index Nominum / W. Melion and L. Palmer Wandel.

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In bringing together work on optic theory, ethnography, and the visual cultures of Christianity, this volume offers a sense of the richness and the complexity of early modern thinking about the human eye. The seven case studies explore the relationship between vision and knowledge, taking up such diverse artifacts as an emblem book, a Jesuit mariological text, Calvin’s Institutes, Las Casas’s Apologia , Hans Staden’s True History , the Codex Telleriano-Remensis , and an exegetical painting by Herri met de Bles. Argued from different disciplinary perspectives, these essays pose crucial questions about the eyes, asking how they were construed as instruments of witnessing, perception, representation, cognition, and religious belief. Contributors include: Tom Conley, Walter Melion, José Rabasa, Lee Palmer Wandel, Michel Weemans, Nicolás Wey Gómez, and Neil Whitehead.

Essays chiefly in English; one essay in French.