In 1955, having unexpectedly arrived at a strange and happy transformation of his life, Isaiah Berlin wrote to his future wife with a musing question. ‘Is there some calm deep feeling which is not tied to “images” and goes on in some even, mystical fashion?’ Behind those words, whether or not the writer's thoughts were bent that way, lie centuries of theory and practice. Mystical striving towards some ‘calm deep’ understanding of God was closely connected to the aim of lifting contemplation above and beyond attachment to the visual. Imageless devotion was part of a spiritual ideal of the medieval Church. But was it not also an ideal of the Protestant reformers who denied the very concept of monastic contemplation, and who worked so hard to eliminate dependence on images in religious learning?

Given the amount that we have learnt in recent years, and are still learning, about the role of imagery, actual and mental, in medieval thought and religion, there is a self-evident absurdity in posing this question in the compass of a short essay. But even if the matter can only be barely broached, it must be worth considering whether there are any continuities, or only discontinuities, in the visual methodology and aspirations which, after so many centuries, were fundamentally called in question in the sixteenth century. Perhaps a health warning is in place at the outset.