Over at Good Reports I’ve posted a quick review of Stephen Prothero’s American Jesus. It’s a fascinating exploration of the way representations of Jesus have changed over time, evolving to meet the demands of a changing audience. The only bad thing about the book was that the reproductions of the artwork in the paperback were pretty crude and hard to make out. So I went online to find some of them, and expanded my search outside of Prothero’s range, both forward and back.

Fresco from the Catacomb of Callixtus, 3^rd century. The first depictions of Jesus were as the good shepherd, a beardless youth. Jesus wouldn’t be depicted with a beard until the late 3^rd or early 4^th century.

Christ Pantocrator, 6^th century panel icon.

El Greco, “Christ Carrying the Cross” (1580).

Heinrich Hoffman, “Christ’s Image” (1894). Prothero: “During the first decades of the twentieth century, reproductions of Hoffman’s works appeared in hundreds of books and churches across the United States. They also provided Americans with their most vivid and enduring images of Jesus.”

Warner Sallman, “Head of Christ” (1940). Prothero: “As of the turn of the twenty-first century, over 500 million copies had been produced, making ‘Head of Christ’ the most common religious image in the world.”

Willis Wheatley, “Christ, Liberator,” better known as “Laughing Jesus” (1973).

Janet McKenzie, “Jesus of the People” (2000). McKenzie won the National Catholic Reporter’s worldwide art competition “Jesus 2000″ with this painting.

Bas Uterwijk, “Jesus” (2020). The Irish Catholic: “Speaking about the techniques Mr Uterwijk used in the development of the image, Dr Caffrey said it ‘builds on the traditional iconography of Jesus Christ. He has specialised in making portraits of historical figures using Artbreeder which uses GAN (generative confrontation network) to create a new image that looks realistic and gives life and personality to representations of famous people which are derived from paintings or sculpture.'”