This article is republished here with permission from The Conversation. This content is shared here because the topic may interest Snopes readers; however, it does not represent the work of Snopes verifiers or editors.
The representation of Jesus as a white, European man has come under new scrutiny during this period of introspection about the legacy of racism in society.
When protesters called for the removal of Confederate statues in the US, activist Shaun King went further, suggesting that the murals and artwork depicting the “White Jesus” should “come down.”
His concerns about the representation of Christ and how it is used to defend notions of white supremacy are not isolated. Prominent scholars and the Archbishop of Canterbury have called to reconsider the representation of Jesus as a white man.
As a European Renaissance art historian, I study the evolving image of Jesus Christ from the year 1350 to 1600. Some of the best-known representations of Christ, from Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper” to Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment” in the Sistine Chapel, they were produced during this period.
But the most widely reproduced image of Jesus comes from another period. It is Warner Sallman’s “Head of Christ”, with light eyes and light hair, from 1940. Sallman, a former commercial artist who created art for advertising campaigns, successfully marketed this image worldwide.
Through Sallman’s partnerships with two Christian publishing companies, a Protestant and a Catholic, the Head of Christ was included in everything from prayer cards to stained glass, fake oil paintings, calendars, hymnals, and night lights.
Sallman’s painting culminates a long tradition of white Europeans creating and disseminating images of Christ made in their own image.
In search of the holy face
The historical Jesus probably had the brown eyes and skin of other first-century Jews from Galilee, a region in Biblical Israel. But no one knows exactly what Jesus was like. There are no known images of Jesus from his life, and although the kings Saul and David of the Old Testament are explicitly called tall and beautiful in the Bible, there is little indication of the appearance of Jesus in the Old or New Testament.
Joseph Wilpert
Even these texts are contradictory: the Old Testament prophet Isaiah reads that the coming savior “had neither beauty nor majesty”, while the Book of Psalms affirms that he was “more just than the sons of men”, the word “just “refers to physical beauty.
The first images of Jesus Christ emerged in the 1st and 3rd centuries AD, amid concerns about idolatry. They were less about capturing the real appearance of Christ than about clarifying his role as ruler or as savior.
To clearly indicate these roles, early Christian artists often relied on syncretism, which means that they combined visual formats from other cultures.
Probably the most popular syncretic image is Christ as the Good Shepherd, a beardless youth figure based on pagan depictions of Orpheus, Hermes, and Apollo.
In other common representations, Christ uses the toga or other attributes of the emperor. Theologian Richard Viladesau argues that the mature bearded Christ, with “Syrian” style long hair, combines characteristics of the Greek god Zeus and the figure of the Old Testament Samson, among others.
Christ as self-portrait
The earliest portraits of Christ, in the sense of authoritarian similarities, were believed to be self-portraits: the miraculous “image not made by human hands,” or acheiropoietos.
Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
This belief originated in the 7th century AD. C., based on a legend that Christ healed King Abgar of Edessa in present-day Urfa, Turkey, through a miraculous image of his face, now known as the Mandylion.
A similar legend adopted by Western Christianity between the 11th and 14th centuries relates how, before his death by crucifixion, Christ left an impression of his face on the veil of Saint Veronica, an image known as the Volto Santo, or “Holy Face” ”
Artist Antonello da Messina. The Friedsam Collection, Legacy of Michael Friedsam, 1931, Metropolitan Museum, New York
These two images, along with other similar relics, have formed the basis of iconic traditions about the “true image” of Christ.
From the perspective of art history, these artifacts reinforced an already standardized image of a bearded Christ with shoulder-length dark hair.
In the Renaissance, European artists began to combine the icon and the portrait, creating Christ in his likeness. This happened for a variety of reasons, from identifying with Christ’s human suffering to commenting on one’s creative power.
Albrecht Dürer / Alte Pinakothek Collections
The 15th century Sicilian painter Antonello da Messina, for example, painted small pictures of the Suffering Christ formatted exactly like his portraits of normal people, with the subject positioned between a fictitious parapet and a plain black background signed “Antonello da Messina painted me . “
The 16th-century German artist, Albrecht Dürer, blurred the line between the holy face and his own image in a famous 1500 self-portrait. In this, he posed head-on as an icon, with his beard and lush shoulder-length hair recalling that of Christ. The monogram “AD” could also mean “Albrecht Dürer” or “Anno Domini” – “in the year of our Lord”.
In whose image?
This phenomenon was not restricted to Europe: there are images of Jesus from the 16th and 17th centuries with, for example, Ethiopian and Indian features.
In Europe, however, the image of a light-skinned European Christ began to influence other parts of the world through European trade and colonization.
Artist Andrea Mantegna. The J. Paul Getty museum
The “Adoration of the Magi” by the Italian painter Andrea Mantegna from 1505 AD features three different magicians who, according to contemporary tradition, came from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. They feature expensive porcelain, agate, and brass items that would have been prized imports from China and the Persian and Ottoman empires.
But Jesus’ light skin and blue eyes suggest that he is not from the Middle East but born in Europe. And the fake-Hebrew script embroidered on Mary’s cuffs and hem creates a complicated relationship with the Judaism of the Holy Family.
In Mantegna’s Italy, anti-Semitic myths were already prevalent among the majority of the Christian population, and Jews were often segregated to their own neighborhoods in major cities.
The artists tried to distance Jesus and his parents from their Jewishness. Even seemingly small attributes like pierced ears (the earrings were associated with Jewish women, their removal with a conversion to Christianity) could represent a transition to Christianity represented by Jesus.
Much later, anti-Semitic forces in Europe, including the Nazis, would attempt to totally divorce Jesus from his Judaism in favor of an Aryan stereotype.
White Jesus abroad
As Europeans colonized increasingly distant lands, they brought with them a European Jesus. Jesuit missionaries established painting schools that taught new converts Christian art in a European way.
A small altarpiece made at the school of Giovanni Niccolò, the Italian Jesuit who founded the “Painters’ Seminary” in Kumamoto, Japan, around 1590, combines a traditional Japanese gilding and a mother-of-pearl shrine with a distinctive white paint. European Madonna and Child.
National Art’s Museum
In colonial Latin America, called “New Spain” by European colonists, images of a white Jesus reinforced a caste system in which Christian European Europeans occupied the upper level, while those with darker skin from the perceived mix with the native populations they occupied a considerably lower place.
The 1695 painting by artist Nicolás Correa de Santa Rosa de Lima, the first Catholic saint born in “New Spain”, shows her metaphorical marriage to a fair-skinned, blond Christ.
Legacies of likeness
Scholar Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey argue that in the centuries following the European colonization of the Americas, the image of a white Christ associated him with the logic of empire and could be used to justify the oppression of Native Americans and African Americans.
In a multiracial but uneven America, there was a disproportionate representation of a white Jesus in the media. It was not just Warner Sallman’s Head of Christ that was widely described; A large proportion of actors who have played Jesus on television and in movies have been white with blue eyes.
The images of Jesus have historically served many purposes, from symbolically presenting his power to representing his real likeness. But representation is important, and viewers need to understand the complicated history of consuming images of Christ.
Anna Swartwood House, assistant professor of art history, University of South Carolina
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
