It is interesting to note Edward J. Sozanski’s point of view Philadelphia Inquirer. Was mythological the right word to use? Would biblical and traditional sources not have been more accurate, in the first paragraph? Later he uses “traditional” sources, by which he means specifically the Veil of Veronica and the Mandylion. Which of the many textile images does he mean? Those that he probably means were almost certainly not sources. And he tells us they can’t withstand forensic scrutiny. What scrutiny is that? There has been some, of course, but it is not all that comprehensive or that conclusive. He writes:
. . . the point, after all, is Rembrandt’s idea to represent Jesus not as a divine presence derived primarily from mythological sources, but as a flesh-and-blood person.
Many paintings in the show that present Jesus this way, including two other Rembrandt-studio copies of lost pictures, are consistent in this regard. The issue then becomes, is absolute naturalism, in the person of a living model, a plausible way to portray a man believed by Christians to be the Son of God, given that no one knows what Jesus looked like?
It’s as reasonable as using traditional sources, which can’t withstand rigorous forensic scrutiny. They include two legendary textiles – the Veil of Veronica and the Mandylion, bearing images of Christ’s face – and a letter, probably apocryphal, purported to have been written by Publius Lentulus, a supposed Roman governor of Judea before Pilate, that includes a partial description of Jesus.
The two textiles, like the controversial Shroud of Turin, are supposed to bear a likeness that was transferred when the cloths were pressed to Jesus’ face – in the case of the Mandylion by Jesus himself.
The Lentulus letter describes Jesus as having long hair "the color of a ripe hazelnut," which is why the canonical Jesus usually has brown hair. Rembrandt gave his Jesus black hair.
Canonical Jesus? The term usually refers to non-Gnostic or in the more modern sense a traditional understanding of Jesus rather the interpretations and beliefs of the “historical Jesus” movements from Albert Schweitzer to the Jesus Seminar. But okay, it can apply to art, I guess! However since the Lentulus letter wasn’t even discovered until the 15th century, if not made up then, it would have been a neat trick for artists before then to have used it as a guide to the color of Jesus’ hair. I’m inclined to think there are other more likely sources such as the Christ Pantocrator, an icon at St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai that dates back to about 550 A.D.
What are the Veil of Veronica and the Mandylion to which Sozanski’s is referring? There can be no end of confusion here. There is The Holy Face of Genoa, kept in the Church of St. Bartholomew of the Armenians in Genoa. Some believe this is the Mandylion of Edessa while others, including me, think the Shroud of Turin is what became to be known as the Mandylion in mid-to-late-Babylonian Christendom. Another is something else called the Mandylion of Edessa, once kept in the Church of Saint Silvestro in Rome and now kept in the Matilda chapel in the Vatican. These two images look remarkably alike. They do have some similarities to the facial image on the shroud; at least the long thin nose and the long hair. But the eyes are not owlish and the beard is apparently not forked. Unlike the shroud, these images are not negative images, are not monochromatic and appear to have been painted. (It is the forensics, here, that fail, not to scrutiny). There is a sense of photorealism to them and yet they seem primitive at the same time. Whether or not they are what the claim to be, authentic acheiropoieta is beyond our scope here.
There are, in addition to these two icons, at least five more are claimed to be the true image made when Veronica wiped Jesus brow during his walk to Calgary: 1) The Veronica kept at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. 2) The Holy Face at the The Hofburg Palace in Vienna. 3) The Holy Face at the Monastery of the Holy Face in Alicante, Spain. 4) The Holy Face at the cathedral of Jaén in southern Spain. 5) Veronica, a facial portrait of a man at a Capuchin monastery in Manoppello, Italy. Unlike the other claimants, it does not have a cut-out frame. Unlike the other images, it seems most like an early Renaissance painting.
Not being Catholic, I’m not impressed with the legend of the Veronica image and I doubt it happened. Smear mud on your face and then press a towel to it: what’s going to be on the cloth?? I doubt there could possibly be an image that would look enough like a human face as the legend (and the multiple relics) suggest.
But the Shroud is a different matter. It is strange and mysterious. It doesn’t bother me as the Veronica image does, because the Shroud does seem possible somehow. Especially since nobody can figure how the image was transferred to the cloth.
As for what Jesus looked like, that’s not so important to me either. I’m not hung up on it, I suppose that’s the best way to say it. But I do love to collect images of the Face of Christ and I’ve been putting them in a Flickr album. It’s a big collection:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/waitingfortheword/sets/72157626190637769/
I added the Rembrandt faces only a few days ago so that’s why I was intrigued by this blog post. One article said that Rembrandt was the first to paint Christ as a natural part of humanity rather than a mysterious spiritual person that was visiting earth. Christ was truly human, truly a man and Rembrandt apparently strived for accuracy in portraying this. As a result, he influenced how Christ was portrayed after that.
Rembrandt understand something important about the mystery of Christ and it is the Incarnation of God ! And he had enough wisdom and talent to translate this in his paintings. That’s why they are so different than what was done before him.
And for me, the Shroud is a bit like a painting of Rembrandt, in the sense that he played an important role in my life for a better understanding of the Incarnation of Christ. The data that were gathered by the scientists (mainly by the STURP and some more researchers after that) proved that it was a REAL human being who was enveloped in this cloth ! Yes, a real human like you, me and anyone else !
The data (from the blood particularly) tell us that this man had normal human blood like everyone of us with a probable AB blood type. Some non authorised DNA researches (made in France by a specialist) even showed that this man had chromosome X AND Y in his blood, just like us ! I know this last data isn’t official but it MAKES SENSE ! Also, the data showed that this man really suffered and really died like everybody would if he was scourged and crucified. The data even tell us that the most probable cause of death was normal in the context of a crucifixion : Asphyxia. And I would go as far as saying that the body of this man even experiment the first few stages of decaying like every corpse would (if we believe, like I do, that the Maillard reaction had something to do with the body image formation). So, this man lived and died just like every human being on this planet ! There’s nothing special about those data. It could be the body and blood of anyone except for the fact that the Shroud shows EVERY marks (and some more) of the Passion of Christ reported in the Gospels !
So, if the Shroud is genuine (like I believe it is), here’s one of the most important message he can tell us : Jesus was human as much as he was God and as much as any person ! A REAL HUMAN. Not a God with just an appearance of humanity. It’s not a banal statement. I think this reality is too often forgotten. Many people tend to only look at the divinity of Chris and it’s even true when they look at the Shroud. In fact, when it comes to the Shroud, I’ve not seen too many talks about this idea of the Incarnation. I would love to see some Shroud experts put this idea forward in the future when they do lectures on the Shroud. Almost every expert who talk about the Shroud, talks about the Passion, the death and the resurrection of Jesus, and rarely (almost never) about the Incarnation of God.
For me, it was also like that when I first got interested by it. But now, when I look at the Shroud, I see the humanity of Jesus FIRST ! I see a real man who really suffered and who really died. IT WASN’T A JOKE ! Only after, I start meditate about the Passion, the death and the resurrection. And I think it would be a very good thing if every Christian could also reflect about the MYSTERY of the Incarnation of God when he looks at the Shroud.
It’s true, the more I look at the Shroud and the more I see the HUMANITY of Jesus. That’s a very important part of the mystery of Jesus-Christ (as much important as the Passion, death and resurrection in my opinion) and we should reflect more about this, because it can help us understand better who God really is ! For me, the Shroud help understand that God is Love ! Yes, God so love the world that he accept to take a complete part of our fragile human nature. It’s a great SIGN of the immense LOVE of God for us ! He is WITH US into our humanity !
We tend to forget it but Jesus was a REAL human being like us ! The Shroud, with his awesome body image and all the blood stains on it, can really help us to understand this part of the MYSTERY… I really think so !!! By the way, the Sudarium of Oviedo is another important relic that also can help us understand better the humanity of Jesus-Christ, especially when the data concerning it are put in relation with those of the Shroud.