The Bible Portrayed in 200 Masterpieces of Painting brings together examples of the most deeply imagined and passionately executed works in the Western canon of art. Each painting expresses the artist’s creative engagement with an incident from the Biblical story and is set next to the Biblical passage that it illustrates. By so doing text and image complement each other. Words give meaning to the image and throw light on its iconography, that is, its use of symbolism. In return the paintings act as commentary, interpreting the text by intensely imagining and visualizing it. At the same time the sequence of illustrations provides a sense of the sweep and propulsion of the Biblical narrative.