• Privacy Policy
  • Contact Us
  • Shop
  • Newsletter
Faithfully Magazine
Tuesday, May 30, 2023
  • About
    • Staff and Advisors
    • Advertise With Us
    • Submissions
  • Q&As
    John Blake photo by John Nowak for CNN

    CNN Reporter Talks Race, Faith and Reconciliation in Powerful Memoir ‘More Than I Imagined’

    Brown Baby Jesus author Dorena Williamson

    Author Celebrates Jesus’ Messy, Multiethnic Family Tree in ‘Brown Baby Jesus’

    KevOnStage and MrsKevOnStage in an interview with Faithfully Magazine.

    Interview: KevOnStage and MrsKevOnStage Talk Sex, Therapy, and Why ‘Marriage Be Hard’ (Video)

    Christina Edmondson and Ekemini Uwan on Truth's Table book

    ‘Truth’s Table’ Authors Talk Early Beginnings, Centering Black Women, and Inspiring One Another

  • Exclusives
    Karen Abercrombie

    After Award-Winning Role in Top-Grossing Christian Movie, Karen Abercrombie Is Leading Change From Within

    black women group

    ‘Righteous and Ratchet’ Black Women of Faith Embraced on Jemele Hill’s ‘Sanctified’ Podcast

    Josh McDowell

    Apologist Josh McDowell Backtracks After Claiming Black Families Don’t Value Education

    Christian author and preacher Dr. Voddie Baucham

    ‘Fault Lines’ Author Voddie Baucham Confused or Making Things Up, Richard Delgado Says in Response to Misquote on ‘Righteous Actions’ of Whites

  • Profiled
    Chris Broussard

    Sports Analyst Chris Broussard Uses Hoops and Christianity to Address Needs of Young Men

    Bishop Noel Jones

    Bishop Noel Jones: Engagement, Life, Family and Ministry (Profiled)

    nadine raphael

    From Prison to the Pulpit: Nadine Raphael on God’s ‘Greater Plan’ for Her Life (Profiled)

    lisa sharon harper

    Lisa Sharon Harper Is Her ‘Ancestors’ Wildest Dreams’ (Profiled)

  • Remember
    Rev. Dr. William Hiram Bentley

    Black Evangelicalism and the Reforming Influence of William H. Bentley

    Marie Bassili Assaad and Mother Irene

    Knitting Together the Community of Love: Lessons From Marie Bassili Assaad and Mother Irene

    Rev. Sutton E. Griggs

    The Complex Legacy of Sutton E. Griggs: From Respected Leader to Race Traitor?

    fannie lou hamer

    Fannie Lou Hamer: Forerunner of Faith-Driven, Pro-Life Democrats (Remember)

  • Opinion & Analysis
    migrants

    When Faith Says to Help Migrants — and the Law Says Don’t

    couple with child

    Missionary System That Brought US Man Accused of Abusing African ‘Orphans’ Was Always Deeply Flawed

    Civil Rights March 1963

    The Women Who Stood With Martin Luther King Jr. and Sustained a Movement for Social Change

    pile of books

    In New Jersey, School Segregation Didn’t End; It Evolved

  • Specials
    • All
    • Growing a Green Church
    laudato trees earthbeat

    Laudato Trees Planting Program Enlists Catholic Properties to Help Increase DC’s Canopy

SUBSCRIBE
  • Login
  • Register
No Result
View All Result
Faithfully Magazine
No Result
View All Result

The Long History of How Jesus Came to Resemble a White European

FM Editors by FM Editors
July 28, 2020
Reading Time: 11 mins read
Warner Sallman's Head of Christ painting

Warner Sallman’s "Head of Christ," 1940.

295
SHARES
ShareTweetPin It

By Anna Swartwood House, University of South Carolina

Leer en español

The portrayal of Jesus as a white, European man has come under renewed scrutiny during this period of introspection over the legacy of racism in society.

As protesters called for the removal of Confederate statues in the U.S., activist Shaun King went further, suggesting that murals and artwork depicting “white Jesus” should “come down.”

His concerns about the depiction of Christ and how it is used to uphold notions of white supremacy are not isolated. Prominent scholars and the archbishop of Canterbury have called to reconsider Jesus’ portrayal as a white man.

As a European Renaissance art historian, I study the evolving image of Jesus Christ from A.D. 1350 to 1600. Some of the best-known depictions of Christ, from Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper” to Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment” in the Sistine Chapel, were produced during this period.

Warner Sallman's Head of Christ painting

But the all-time most-reproduced image of Jesus comes from another period. It is Warner Sallman’s light-eyed, light-haired “Head of Christ” from 1940. Sallman, a former commercial artist who created art for advertising campaigns, successfully marketed this picture worldwide.

Through Sallman’s partnerships with two Christian publishing companies, one Protestant and one Catholic, the Head of Christ came to be included on everything from prayer cards to stained glass, faux oil paintings, calendars, hymnals and night lights.

Sallman’s painting culminates a long tradition of white Europeans creating and disseminating pictures of Christ made in their own image.

In search of the holy face

The historical Jesus likely 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 looked like. There are no known images of Jesus from his lifetime, and while the Old Testament Kings Saul and David are explicitly called tall and handsome in the Bible, there is little indication of Jesus’ appearance in the Old or New Testaments.

‘The Good Shepherd.’
Joseph Wilpert

Even these texts are contradictory: The Old Testament prophet Isaiah reads that the coming savior “had no beauty or majesty,” while the Book of Psalms claims he was “fairer than the children of men,” the word “fair” referring to physical beauty.

The earliest images of Jesus Christ emerged in the first through third centuries A.D., amidst concerns about idolatry. They were less about capturing the actual appearance of Christ than about clarifying his role as a ruler or as a savior.

To clearly indicate these roles, early Christian artists often relied on syncretism, meaning they combined visual formats from other cultures.

Probably the most popular syncretic image is Christ as the Good Shepherd, a beardless, youthful figure based on pagan representations of Orpheus, Hermes and Apollo.

In other common depictions, Christ wears the toga or other attributes of the emperor. The theologian Richard Viladesau argues that the mature bearded Christ, with long hair in the “Syrian” style, combines characteristics of the Greek god Zeus and the Old Testament figure Samson, among others.

Christ as self-portraitist

The first portraits of Christ, in the sense of authoritative likenesses, were believed to be self-portraits: the miraculous “image not made by human hands,” or acheiropoietos.

Acheiropoietos.
Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow

This belief originated in the seventh century A.D., based on a legend that Christ healed King Abgar of Edessa in modern-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 recounts 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.”

Christ crowned with thorns.
Artist Antonello da Messina. The Friedsam Collection, Bequest 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, making Christ in their own likeness. This happened for a variety of reasons, from identifying with the human suffering of Christ to commenting on one’s own creative power.

Albrecht Dürer. Albrecht Dürer/Alte Pinakothek Collections

The15th-century Sicilian painter Antonello da Messina, for example, painted small pictures of the suffering Christ formatted exactly like his portraits of regular people, with the subject positioned between a fictive parapet and a plain black background and 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 self-portrait of 1500. In this, he posed frontally like an icon, with his beard and luxuriant shoulder-length hair recalling Christ’s. The “AD” monogram could stand equally for “Albrecht Dürer” or “Anno Domini” – “in the year of our Lord.”

In whose image?

This phenomenon was not restricted to Europe: There are 16th- and 17th-century pictures of Jesus 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.

‘Adoration of the Magi.’
Artist Andrea Mantegna. The J. Paul Getty Museum

RELATED POSTS

Laudato Trees Planting Program Enlists Catholic Properties to Help Increase DC’s Canopy

‘Hitler’s American Model’ Author on How the US Influenced Nazi Race Laws

#MeToo Founder Tarana Burke on What’s Next for the Movement

The Italian painter Andrea Mantegna’s “Adoration of the Magi” from A.D. 1505 features three distinct magi, who, according to one contemporary tradition, came from Africa, the Middle East and Asia. They present expensive objects of porcelain, agate and brass that would have been prized imports from China and the Persian and Ottoman empires.

But Jesus’ light skin and blues eyes suggest that he is not Middle Eastern but European-born. And the faux-Hebrew script embroidered on Mary’s cuffs and hemline belie a complicated relationship to the Judaism of the Holy Family.

In Mantegna’s Italy, anti-Semitic myths were already prevalent among the majority Christian population, with Jewish people often segregated to their own quarters of major cities.

Artists tried to distance Jesus and his parents from their Jewishness. Even seemingly small attributes like pierced ears – earrings were associated with Jewish women, their removal with a conversion to Christianity – could represent a transition toward the Christianity represented by Jesus.

Much later, anti-Semitic forces in Europe including the Nazis would attempt to divorce Jesus totally from his Judaism in favor of an Aryan stereotype.

White Jesus abroad

As Europeans colonized increasingly farther-flung lands, they brought a European Jesus with them. Jesuit missionaries established painting schools that taught new converts Christian art in a European mode.

A small altarpiece made in the school of Giovanni Niccolò, the Italian Jesuit who founded the “Seminary of Painters” in Kumamoto, Japan, around 1590, combines a traditional Japanese gilt and mother-of-pearl shrine with a painting of a distinctly white, European Madonna and Child.

Nicolas Correa’s ‘The Mystic Betrothal of Saint Rose of Lima.’
Museo Nacional de Arte

In colonial Latin America – called “New Spain” by European colonists – images of a white Jesus reinforced a caste system where white, Christian Europeans occupied the top tier, while those with darker skin from perceived intermixing with native populations ranked considerably lower.

Artist Nicolas Correa’s 1695 painting of Saint Rose of Lima, the first Catholic saint born in “New Spain,” shows her metaphorical marriage to a blond, light-skinned Christ.

Legacies of likeness

Scholar Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey argue that in the centuries after 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 and African Americans.

In a multiracial but unequal America, there was a disproportionate representation of a white Jesus in the media. It wasn’t only Warner Sallman’s Head of Christ that was depicted widely; a large proportion of actors who have played Jesus on television and film have been white with blue eyes.

Pictures of Jesus historically have served many purposes, from symbolically presenting his power to depicting his actual likeness. But representation matters, and viewers need to understand the complicated history of the images of Christ they consume.The Conversation

Editor’s note: This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.


Anna Swartwood House, Assistant Professor of Art History, University of South Carolina


Share This Post

Share via

Share This Post

  • Digg
  • Tumblr
  • Flipboard
  • SMS
More
  • Report
295
SHARES
ShareTweetPin It
Tags: ArtEasterFeaturedHistoryRace
FM Editors

FM Editors

Faithfully Magazine is a fresh, bold and exciting news and culture publication that covers issues, conversations and events impacting Christian communities of color.

Related Posts

laudato trees earthbeat
Growing a Green Church

Laudato Trees Planting Program Enlists Catholic Properties to Help Increase DC’s Canopy

May 25, 2023
John Blake photo by John Nowak for CNN
Features

CNN Reporter Talks Race, Faith and Reconciliation in Powerful Memoir ‘More Than I Imagined’

May 2, 2023

Recommended Stories

George Floyd Mural

Convicted Civility: Engaging as Christians in a Post-George Floyd America 

June 18, 2020
Ethiopian Orthodox

Christian Universities Are on the Rise in Africa

July 24, 2017
The 3 Types of Christians We See Today—Which One Are You?

The 3 Types of Christians We See Today—Which One Are You?

May 18, 2017

Popular Stories

  • stream movies laptop

    Free Christian Movies: How and Where to Watch Free Christian Movies Online

    460 shares
    Share 184 Tweet 115
  • Are Jesus and John the Baptist Cousins or Related in Anyway?

    417 shares
    Share 166 Tweet 104
  • Paige Hilken, Wife of North Coast Church Pastor Christopher Hilken, Dies by Suicide

    407 shares
    Share 163 Tweet 102
  • After 20 Years, Bishop Noel Jones Says He’s Finally Ready to Marry Partner Loretta Jones

    363 shares
    Share 145 Tweet 91
  • NYC Megachurch Pastor A.R. Bernard’s Son Dies After Losing Battle With Alcoholism

    285 shares
    Share 114 Tweet 71

Copyright © 2023 Faithfully Media, LLC. This website participates in affiliate programs.

No Result
View All Result
  • About
    • Staff and Advisors
    • Advertise With Us
    • Submissions
  • Q&As
  • Exclusives
  • Profiled
  • Remember
  • Opinion & Analysis
  • Specials

Copyright © 2023 Faithfully Media, LLC. This website participates in affiliate programs.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password? Sign Up

Create New Account!

Fill the forms bellow to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
Share via

Share This Post

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Reddit
  • Email
  • WhatsApp
  • Copy Link
  • Tumblr
  • Digg
  • Flipboard
  • SMS

Add New Playlist

Add to Collection

  • Public collection title

  • Private collection title

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.

Are you sure want to unlock this post?
Unlock left : 0
Are you sure want to cancel subscription?
Send this to a friend