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Oct 10, 2018 · Here is a list of the six most ancient depictions of Jesus known to historians: 1. Alexamenos graffito, 1st century. This “graffito,” representing a person looking at a donkey-headed man being...
- What Did Jesus Really Look Like
Think of Jesus Christ and the image of a European-looking...
- Archaeology
Our collection of articles on the study, recovery, and...
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Jesus Christ - The oldest images of Jesus Christ - Aleteia
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Our collection of articles on art that uses religious...
- What Did Jesus Really Look Like
The UsefulCharts video above assembles the ten earliest known images of Jesus in art, organizing them in a countdown that works its way back from the sixth century. Remarkably, these examples remain immediately recognizable even a millennium and a half back, though beyond that point the son of God becomes ...
- Alexamenos Graffito – 1st to 3rd Century
- The Good Shepherd – 3rd Century
- Adoration of The Magi – 3rd Century
- Healing of The Paralytic – 3rd Century
- Christ Between Peter and Paul, 4th Century
- Pantokrator – 6th Century
Is this a depiction (albeit, a mocking one) of Jesus – perhaps even the oldest surviving image of Jesus? These questions are matters for debate about the Alexamenos graffito. The image is carved in plaster on a wall in Rome and is dated to somewhere between the 1st and 3rd centuries. It depicts a man looking at a person with the head of a donkey th...
“The Good Shepherd” image is found in the St. Callisto catacomb in Rome and is believed to have been painted around the 3rd century. [See also: 12 Amazing Christian Sculptures Made Entirely Out of LEGOs]
This is a picture of a cast of a sarcophagus that is in the Vatican museums. It shows the scene of the magi adoring the Christ child and is dated to the 3rd century.
This painting is on the wall of the baptistry of a church in a (long abandoned) ancient city in Syria. It depicts the story of the healing of the paralytic found in Mark 2, and it is dated to the mid-3rd century. [See also: 21 Mesmerizing Photos of the World’s Most Beautiful Churches]
Image detail of Jesus: This appears in a cemetery in an imperial villa that belonged to Constantine and is dated to the 4th century.
This is the oldest surviving panel icon of Jesus, and it is found at Saint Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai. [See also: 13 Beautiful Non-White Depictions of the Blessed Virgin Mary]
The depiction of Jesus in pictorial form dates back to early Christian art and architecture, as aniconism in Christianity was rejected within the ante-Nicene period. It took several centuries to reach a conventional standardized form for his physical appearance, which has subsequently remained largely stable since that time.
- Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), chromolithograph, published 1886.
- Ascension of Christ (Luke 24, 51), chromolithograph, published in 1886.
- Jesus bless the children (Matthew 19, 13-15), chromolithograph, published 1886.
- Old engraved illustration of The Last Supper, painting by Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci.
Paintings of Jesus Christ have occupied a prominent role in the art world for close on 1500 years. Many commissions by the rich and wealthy all trying to prove their faith and muster influence with the church use Jesus Christ as the central role or theme.
People also ask
Where did the earliest images of Jesus come from?
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How was Jesus depicted in Greco-Roman art?
Why is Jesus depicted in pictorial form?
Artists took the most notable characteristics of divinity from the Greco-Roman world and combined them into an image of a roughly 30-year-old man—devising the image recognizable as Jesus today: the slender, pale, bearded, long-haired Jesus.
