Image Links / Jesus

"Strong contender for the most influential person in history" does definitely extend to "strong contender for the most influential person on art" - all through the history of art since Jesus' time.

---

---

• The Lost Lamb◊ by Del Parson (current page image by winning the tropers' image pickin thread)
  • Originally painted by Del Parson^note An account of how the deviation from the usual lamb-over-shoulder-shorthand came about can be found here, this picture is the go to template for "a picture of Jesus" all over the internet - "hung" in lots of collections and pages, and probably the one which most parodies or memes involving such a picture are based off (usually involving something else in place of the sheep, like a velociraptor in this one◊ skewering at "what measure is a non-cute?"). This makes it one of the most influential depictions of Jesus in its time - that is, here and now.
• Christ Giving His Blessing◊ by Hans Memling
  • Painted by Memling in minimalist, almost expressionist simplicity^note in 1478, no less, the dark clothes, hair, and background all almost blend into one another to draw the view in to the essentials of the portrait - focussing one on the subject.
    And this is how to really spoil the effect: part of this image (off-colored and cropped down to the point of not just losing its uniqueness, but deliberately becoming creepy and uncanny-valleyesque as anything) was used by THX 1138 as the picture displayed by a bot that acts as a therapist of sorts^note So if you came here looking for what on Earth that was, there you go - stick around for the infodump on some of the others, though. - the scene is a shorthand for just how dystopian the future shown there is.
• Christ Carrying the Cross◊ (detail) by Hieronymus Bosch
  • Hieronymus Bosch^note (pronounced so that it sounds like the Russian dish, "Boschtz") is (in)famous for painting figures that are wildly distorted, eeriely inhuman, not-quite-human, or just plain creepy. Even if they are human, and bodily look the part too - they usually fall quite squarely into uncanny valley territory by their expressions and/or postures (just look at all the other people in the bigger picture here◊). This depiction of Jesus is one of the rare exceptions to his usual style in that unlike anyone else painted by Bosch the person shown just looks very human.
• Portrait of Christ◊ by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn
  • Much like Richard Neave in the picture at the end of this page, Rembrandt wanted to get as close as possible to what Jesus "actually" looked like. Since he knew that Jesus was "average-looking for His time and place", Rembrandt asked an average-looking person from the region to sit for him.
• The Christ of Saint John of the Cross◊ by Dali
  • This Bloodless Carnage is devoid of nails, blood, and a crown of thorns, because, according to Dalí, he was convinced by a dream that these features would mar his depiction of Christ. According to Christianity (at least in its orthodox and mainstream teachings), they in turn are convinced that exactly this omitting of suffering is Dramatically Missing the Point - which is a heroic sacrifice.
• Ecce Homo◊ by Otto Dix
  • Otto Dix painted this out of gratitude that he and his family had survived the holocaust. It's part religious votive painting, part self-portrait of a concentration camp survivor.
    The reed in the figure's right hand is from the same biblical description as the crown of thorns - both are meant as a mockery of royal insignia - although unlike said crown it usually doesn't find its way into pictures and so doesn't carry the same overtones of Christ imagery.
• Front mosaic◊ (detail) from Santa Maria Maggiore basilika in Rome^note (you can see all of the picture here◊; the inscription on the book reads "I am the Light of the World" - and although everything looks cooler in Latin, after all the church is in Rome)
  • Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome is one of the oldest churches in the world, built in the fourth century to be as like to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem as the Romans could make it, because they wanted something like there was in the Holy Land at home. As originally they were as like as two peas, and the other church is in quite a state of disrepair due to the region's ... eventfull ... history, apart from being a breathtaking work of architecture in its own right the basilika is also invaluable if you want to know what early church architecture looked like in the Middle East.

• The Light of the World◊ by William Holman Hunt
  • This artist's depiction of a bible verse which more or less says "see me knocking at the door of someone who's been alone for a long time; if they open up, I'll invite them to dinner"^note While the inscription above the picture reads: "Lord, don't pass me by!" Just like the verse about the Light of the World, this also looks cooler in Latin; however here it's gratuitous as this picture is hung in London (in St. Paul's Cathedral). was considered the most culturally influential depiction of Jesus of its time, inspired several works of music in its time^note And later as well: including the background setting for Johnny Cash's and Tom Wait's Down There By the Train - probably - and gave rise to much popular devotion in the late Victorian period. Engraved reproductions were widely hung in nurseries, schools and church buildings - a fact which recent works sometimes shout out to by hanging this picture or similar pictures there (which may or may not include the Fat Lady depicted in almost the same way, and acting as a doorway no less, in Harry Potter).
• Christ Assisted by Angels◊ by James Tissot
  • The angels shown in this picture caring for Jesus after forty days of fasting in the desert would be a pretty good illustration of the night gaunts written about by H. P. Lovecraft. While describing angels as "something out of Lovecraft's work" is actually incredibly biblically accurate, they are canonically more along the lines of an eldritch Lovecraftian horror than looking like night gaunts. The depicted scene is also an innerbiblical shout out to the prophet Elia being cared for by ravens in the desert, which is why they are painted to be bird-like.
• Cristo Giallo◊ (Yellow Christ) by Paul Gauguin
  • In many of the more religious parts of Europe, putting crucifixes or icons at crossroads, borders, and waystations is very common (the idea being asking for divine protection when you come to a metaphorical crossroads in your life - related to the idea of "the devil at the crossroads" - and so also doing that when you come to an actual crossroads). The picture shows just such a "wayside cross". About a decade after Paul Gauguin died, there was a group of artists famous for painting things at off colors - most notably Franz Marc for painting a blue horse - but as you can see here, Gauguin had the idea first.
• Good Shepherd◊ Stained glass at St John the Baptist Anglican Church in Sydney
  • Being from Sydney, this window depicts the Good Shepherd in front of an Australian landscape - and in the death world that is Australia, the old joke about what isn't trying to kill you being "some of the sheep" is very much true (especially if you're walking around it in sandals). Though in first century Galilee, as a shepherd you were one tough cookie anyway - things like fighting off a hungry mountain lion with just a staff are no joke at all. Based on Jesus' self-description as the good shepherd "who lays down his life for the sheep", the image of the Good Shepherd is the most common of the symbolic representations of Christ found in early Christian art before Christian imagery could be made explicit. The form of the image showing a young man carrying a lamb around his neck was very similar to the much older pagan kriophoros^note who is carrying a ram on his shoulders to sacrifice to Hermes: it was impossible to say whether the image was created with the intention of having a Christian significance. This form of depiction continued to be used when and where Christianity no longer needed to be hidden.

• Christ Washing the Disciples' Feet◊ (detail) by Jacopo "Tintoretto" Robusti
  • Instead of narrating a version of the Last Supper where Jesus institutes bread and wine as a symbol of giving His life^note thus instituting the Christian ritual of the Eucharist which does just that to this day foreshadowing and giving meaning to the later heroic sacrifice on the cross (which appears in all the other three Gospels), John the Apostle's account has a story of Christ washing the Disciples' feet^note This story being a favourite theme of Tintoretto's, with at least six known works on the subject. God Himself taking Nice to the Waiter up to eleven by performing for others what was at the time seen as the most demeaning of duties (especially if you're walking around in sandals all day) illustrates by example the whole point of one of Jesus' two core teachings: acting with humble humanity and charity towards others.^note Charity is the English word for the Latin caritas, unconditional love; so this is generally translated as "love others just as you love yourself, and do unto them just as you would have them do unto you". In case you want to know, the other of the two main points is a reiteration and affirmation of the older biblical "love God with all your being".
  Love each other as I have loved you.
• Statue of Christ the Redeemer◊ in Rio
  • Not only one of the best known statues of Christ, zooming into the city over it is also often used as a cinematographic shorthand setting a work in Rio. Including by The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), which manages to pull a bait-and-switch on exactly such an opening (from appearing to show spontaneous prayer) by zooming in on people screaming in front of it the moment the Earth is about to be destroyed - and then going on to showing screaming people in other cities than Rio, all around the globe (as witnessed by other monuments).
• Christ Pantocrator◊ Icon from St. Catherine's monastery at Sinai
  • This is the oldest known icon showing Jesus as Christos Pantocrator^note (Christ and Lord of everything, but Greek and Latin of course sound much better). Icons are religious images which are venerated in the Orthodox confessions^note A confession in this sense is "a sub-religion", a distinct branch of a religion - for example, the most well-known one of Christianity is Catholicism - calling them "sects" is not quite accurate and rife with unfortunate implications as a sect is something that branched off from a mainstream religion for the purpose of a scam. of Christianity. If one should venerate images at all varies between different branches of Christianity - the Orthodox Churches (one of which St. Catherine's monastery belongs to) venerating images are at one end; Catholics are somewhere in the middle with saying that venerating an image itself would be idolatry ^note (literally: image-worship), but venerating the subject depicted and using the image as an aid to that is fine; and at the extreme other end you have the Calvinist and Reformed churches who've outright banned art in their church buildings and see the mere act of creating religious artwork as idolatry in and of itself.
• Ascension◊ by Brian Jekel
  • The artist says about his pictures: "I enjoy the challenge of creating that which has not been seen or taking the viewer to places that cannot be reached" - fairly appropriate given the picture shows someone Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence. And if you want to see a version of Dali's picture without the controversial bloodless carnage, Jekel has that◊, too.
• Divine Mercy◊ by Eugeniusz Marcin Kazimirowski
  • This picture was hidden from the Soviet Communists (as active anti-religiosity and persecution of believers is an orthodox part of Communism) in an attic and later restored. Since the rays of light look a lot like the Polish flag, however, the Catholic church felt it inspired too much misaimed (nationalist) fandom, so they then banned it in turn - before later lifting the ban. The original is less known than reproductions of it by artists who'd only heard descriptions and never seen the original.
• Head of Christ◊ by Warner Sallman
  • Twentieth century America's counterpart to what Hunt's Light of the World was to Victorian England (and what Parson's Lost Lamb is to internet culture), this picture is one of the most well-known and culturally influential depictions of Christ of its time - hung in many churches, schools, and private homes; and what most people of that time and place think of first as the concept of "a picture of Jesus".
• Christ carrying the cross◊ by Domḗnikos Theotokópoulos (most widely known as El Greco)
  • Domḗnikos Theotokópoulos was a Greek painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish renaissance - and so aquired El Greco ("that Greek dude") as a nickname. The artist went along with it: normally signing paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters, and often adding the word Κρής (Krḗs), which means "from Crete" (the largest of the Greek islands). This is another picture◊ of Jesus by El Greco, the face of which is also a self-portrait.^note Taking up a mirror and painting pictures as partial self-portraits when the subjects or rather models for them were either not available or not affordable to sit for pictures is actually not that uncommon among artists, particularily in times before you could just snap a photo and the model had to sit through all of the painting process (and be paid for it); so we know what a bunch of artists approximately looked like by their religious art. Jesus in particular not only had El Greco and Otto Dix from this page sitting in for Him, but a bunch of other artists as well - most famously Dürer, who was a case of Looks Like Jesus anyway.
• Historical Reconstruction◊ by Richard Neave
  • Like Rembrandt long before him, the forensic anthropologist making this image wanted the picture to get as close to what Jesus "actually" looked like as possible. Instead of going by the description and finding someone contemporary who matched it as closely as possible to sit for the portrait, he instead found an average skull from the era - and then used many of the techniques also used in police work for drawing pictures of unknown people or what people who went missing as children might look like years later to reconstruct what the living average person of the era would have looked like (to base the image off that).