The genre of "Figurae Bibliorum", volumes of biblical illustrations accompanied with brief commentaries, was immensely popular in 17th-century Holland. Its origins lay in the Antwerp of the second half of the 16th century. The context of the appearance of this genre, and its implications for the understanding of the Bible in this period, will be presented through a comparison of two works: "Les imagines et figurae bibliorum" of the heresiarch Hendrik Jansen van Barrefelt and the "Envangelicae historiae imagine" of the Spanish Jesuit Jerome Nadal, a spiritual son of Ignatius of Loyola who was at the origins of this printing enterprise.