Face of Jesus

Rembrandt's "Head of Christ"

The Philadelphia Museum of Art was the location of a famous scene in the movie Rocky. It’s where Sylvester Stallone, working out in a gray cotton sweat suit and black knit cap, sprinted up its 72 stone steps, turned around and triumphantly raised his arms as he looked down over the City of Brotherly Love. Museum staff members will tell you nary a day goes by without some tourist standing on the spot and re-enacting the scene.

The museum hosted an extraordinary exhibition from the Louvre in Paris featuring Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn’s revolutionary paintings of Jesus.

Up until Rembrandt, artists restricted their representations of Jesus to ancient prototypes that portrayed Christ as unemotional, fair-skinned, chestnut-haired, thin-faced and glorified by a halo or other symbols. The traditional image was rigidly followed by artists to avoid accusations of transgressing the Second Commandment injunction against idolatry.

But Rembrandt considered this image to be unlikely for an itinerant Semite preaching in the desert and he challenged it. Historians believe he chose a local working class Jewish man as the model for Jesus. This was likely because many Sephardic Jews had settled in his Amsterdam neighborhood after fleeing the Spanish Inquisition.

Aside from representing Jesus as the Jew he was, the paintings evoke a down to earth demeanor. He’s presented as empathetic, thoughtful, meditative, approachable and…human! No halos here.

God sent His Son to us in a stroke of genius that enabled mankind to relate to him in a personal way. Rembrandt shows us an understanding, compassionate person we can relate to. When we talk to him – or at least when I talk to him - this is the sort of image of Jesus I see myself talking to.

Like many artists, Rembrandt had financial problems and faced bankruptcy in 1656. His large house was overstuffed with hoarded items that were meticulously catalogued in an inventory made for his nervous creditors. The contents were sold to satisfy his debts.

One of the items was a painting listed as “Head of Christ, done from life,” which was found hanging in Rembrandt’s bedroom. Since the artist obviously couldn’t have painted a living Jesus, the title referred to his use of a model. It was shortened to “Head of Christ” in the 19th century to remove any confusion.

Ariella Burdick, writing for the Financial Times, contrasted the paintings with another Rembrandt piece, “The Supper at Emmaus” that depicts “a transfigured being – benign and beatific, irradiated by the light of revelation and glowing in the vast darkness all around. He doesn’t experience doubt, he banishes it.”

Burdick compares Rembrandt’s depiction of the risen savior with his painting of a pre-crucifixion Christ who “fills the canvas with the mournful intensity of a man wrestling with loneliness and doubt.” Jesus is seen struggling with his human condition and demonstrating his sympathy for us.

It showed us a Jesus who was absent from art for over a thousand years. It made him more real – and accessible - than ever.

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