Somewhat strange reporting of at artnet:
The face of Jesus seems to turn up all over the place — on a three-cheese pizza, in a water stain, on the Shroud of Turin.
That’s the lede? A tad bit trivializing (except for the shroud) for the Philadelphia Museum of Art?
Now, the face of Jesus is coming to Philadelphia this summer, via no less than seven portraits by Rembrandt van Rijn.
“Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus,” Aug. 3-Oct. 30, 2011, brings seven of Rembrandt’s eight known portraits of Jesus — two of which he kept in his own bedroom — to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The seven paintings are fairly small, and all painted on wood.
The same young man posed for the pictures, art historians say, a young Sephardic Jew from Rembrandt’s neighborhood in Amsterdam, which housed many refugees from the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal. The man’s indentity (sic) is unknown "This was very likely the first time in the history of Christian art that Jesus appeared to be Jewish," said Philadelphia Museum curator Lloyd De Witt.
Really? “[V]ery likely the first time in the history of Christian art that Jesus appeared to be Jewish?” Really? I guess so if you ignore much of the art of the Byzantine world, St. Catherine’s of the Sinai and some of the catacomb paintings.
No, what is pictured is not a Rembrandt of Jesus. It is Rembrandt. Does he look Dutch?
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