It has been thousands of years since anyone has seen and physically walked with Jesus. But His image is everywhere… Sunday school coloring pages, pop culture references, our own imagination as we read scripture. We have a stereotyped mental image of “Jesus”; probably in a white robe with a red sash, beard, long and serious features… but what did He really look like? And more importantly, what was it like to really live with Him and interact with Him as a person, not a symbol or stereotype? Artists through the centuries have grappled with that. While a painting of Christ cannot come close to meeting Him face to face, paintings can awaken our imagination and cause us to think about Jesus and who he is in new ways.
Rembrandt is one such artist who really meditated on Christ through his paintings of Him. A classic Old Master, he painted many stories and scenes from the Old and New Testament, some quite grand and theatrical (in true Baroque fashion). But his Head of Christ studies, which include several small paintings of just Jesus’ head at various angles, have a very different feel. They are intimate, devotional, and you can feel Rembrandt’s curiosity about the Savior.
Rembrandt lived in the “Jewish quarter” of Amsterdam, and it is assumed that he used Jewish men as models for his Jesus paintings. He was really interested in getting closer to the reality of Jesus as he really was on this earth. The expression on Jesus’ face in this study is not formal and posed; it is as if you are watching him listen to a question one of his disciples just asked, or a request for healing from a desperate townsperson. He is soft and approachable, not idealized, but humbly real. He is inclining his head with patience and tenderness to them… and to us, even 2000 years later.
“Yahweh’s Spirit will rest on him: the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of Yahweh.” Isaiah 11:2
