Origin: 17th century or earlier

The Eye of Providence, generally represented as a single eye encased in a floating pyramid or sunburst, has recurred in Western iconography since at least the European early modern period. Occurrences can be found in the painting Supper at Emmaus (1601) and the 1603 book Iconologia, and later, but perhaps most famously, on the Great Seal of the United States beginning in 1789 and the backside of the one-dollar bill from 1876 onward. To the paranoiacs of the present day, the all-seeing emblem appears rather Orwellian in function. But to its early illustrators, it was merely a representation of the divine providence of God, the theological notion that God watches benevolently over the universe.

Origin: 1780s or earlier