The all-seeing eye is perhaps the Renaissance’s most notable contribution to Christian iconography. This symbol’s journey extended over more than two thousand years. Drawn from the biblical symbolism of the divine gaze, the concept was formalized as the eye of providence within the richly visual prose of the Zohar. Reaching Renaissance thinkers through kabbalistic writings, and (to a lesser extent) through Hellenistic texts, the all-seeing eye became a visual icon by the fifteenth century. It spread effectively in both conventional and esoteric circles, adorning religious paintings, Catholic churches, and mystical manifestos.

Thus, this is a symbol with strong traditional foundations, belonging to the common symbolic vocabulary of Western culture. It is now, as it has long been, a compelling “metaphorical image for the divine qualities of the One God that are beyond the grasp of human imagination.” It evokes a powerful monotheistic God, aware of and involved with his creation, probing the conscience of every man. The effulgence of the single radiant eye suggests a pervasive, divine consciousness that recognizes us even as it is recognized by us, that contemplates us even as we contemplate it as the ultimate source of all.

[Shawn E. Eyer, “The All-Seeing Eye, Symbol of the Great Architect, Part One” in Philalethes, The Journal of Masonic Research and Letters, Vol. 68, 2015, 106–118, 130. The quotation is from Michael Stolleis, The Eye of the Law: Two Essays on Legal History. (New York: Birkbeck Law Press, 2009), 9.]