The Many Faces of Christ: Portraying the Holy in the East and West, 300 to 1300
Michele Bacci
It is common to think of Jesus of Nazareth’s main physical characteristics as including long, wavy, blondish hair and a short beard. Yet the Holy Scriptures are silent about Christ’s features, and his representations are hardly consistent in early Christian and medieval arts. The wearing of long hair, moreover, is explicitly condemned by St Paul as shameful and effeminate: therefore it is surprising that, notwithstanding the Apostle’s authoritative judgement, the long-haired archetype came to be accepted, as late as the ninth century, as the standard iconography of the Son of God.
In The Many Faces of Christ Michele Bacci examines the complex historical and cultural dynamics underlying the making and final successful establishment of Christ’s image between late antiquity and the early Renaissance. Unlike earlier studies, the process is described against the background of ancient and biblical conceptions of beauty and the physical look as indicators of moral, ascetic or messianic qualities. It takes into account a broad spectrum of both iconographic and textual sources and investigates the increasingly dominant role played by visual experience in Christian religious practice, which promoted belief in the existence of ancient documents of Christ’s appearance and resulted in the shaping of portrait-like images, said to be true to life. Such phenomena are described in a comparative perspective, with glances at analogous processes in the Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Jain and Taoist traditions.
This book will be of interest not only to specialists of late antique, Byzantine and medieval studies, but to anybody interested in the historical figure of Jesus and its shifting, controversial conceptions over the course of history.
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About Michele Bacci
Reviews for The Many Faces of Christ: Portraying the Holy in the East and West, 300 to 1300
Convivium
this work has many merits, among them that the author actually does draw parallels and comparisons with depictions of other religions sacred images and delivers a rather wide-ranging study of the construction of holy portraits throughout history and across cultures . . . the books introduction raises an important question about when portraits of Jesus emerged and how they were transmitted . . . displays a kind of idiosyncratic genius that readers will find both enlightening and refreshing.
The Catholic Historical Review
This rigorous and innovative study makes a vital contribution to an on-going debate about the emergence and crystallisation of a particular physiognomy for Jesus in Christian art. Drawing upon comparative material from other religious traditions in the ancient world, the author demonstrates an impressive facility with, and command of, a broad range of evidence. Baccis fresh insights are compelling, and will engage readers from a range of backgrounds and scholarly disciplines.
Dr Felicity Harley-McGowan, Gerry Higgins Lecturer in Medieval Art History, University of Melbourne
This erudite and very innovative book on the invention of Christs portrait is the first such study to give full weight to the influence of biblical and later texts that deal with iconic, ascetic beauty.
Jean-Michel Spieser, Professor emeritus, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
What did Jesus of Nazareth look like? Did he have curly or long, blond or black hair, was his beard short or flowing? Written by a brilliant scholar and narrator, this book is the first comprehensive history of the shaping of Christs face in Eastern and Western Christianity from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance. It analyses the search for and promotion of authentic images and authoritative texts. Addressing a wider public, the book offers ground-breaking insights into the religious imagination regarding the nature and role of holy men not only in Christianity, but also in Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism and Islam.
Professor Dr. Gerhard Wolf, Director, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut.