An article on the application of visual aesthetics to religion might be expected to concentrate on paintings and sculpture with religious subject matter as well as on architecture designed for religious functions. Such an article, however, would duplicate a monograph on sacred art. The following discussion undertakes in a more general way to describe some basic perceptual and cognitive aspects of visual imagery and to examine their effects on religious art. Particularly relevant to this discussion are forms of art and kinds of religion not bound to traditional legendary subject matter.

Visual imagery defines the things and events of the world by their perceptual appearance. To be sure, perceptual characteristics are supplemented by all kinds of knowledge, but since such knowledge conveys only indirect information, it is less immediately effective. Images act primarily not by what one knows but by what strikes the eyes. They speak...