This article deals with the problematical status of beauty—especially that of art—for a Christian poet such as George Herbert. In the light of the theology of icons elaborated by the Greek Fathers, it attempts to show how the visual qualities of Herbert’s poems reconcile worldly and divine beauties. By truly teaching the reader how to see properly, they pre-empt both the typically baroque threat of shapelessness and the risk of idolatry, which was such a strong concern in seventeenth-century England.