Recent work on Calvin's theology has focused on the integral relationship between his Institutes and his biblical commentaries. Particularly significant have been the claims that we can understand the development of the structure of the Institutes only in relationship to Calvin's work on his commentaries and that we can understand the content of the Institutes best through a recognition of the traces of the commentaries that are found therein. This article will extend this work, arguing that we best understand the final form of the 1559 Institutes through its relationship to Calvin's recently completed commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament and the gospels. These commentaries, with their focus on the history of God's covenant with God's people, fulfilled in Christ's history, provide this covenant history as a framing device by which the first two books of the 1559 Institutes are shaped. This framing is evident in the new ordering of material in the text, in Calvin's provision of new chapters to fill out this narratively structured order, and in the traces of his scriptural work within the text. Once the structural role of the covenant history is recognised within Books I and II, then Calvin's exposition of Christ's redeeming work through his exegesis of Christ's gospel history II.xvi is seen as the culmination of the theological developments of the first half of the Institutes, completing Calvin's depiction of the broader covenant history as a thoroughly christological reality.