“Head of Christ” (1941) by Warner Sallman is the best known picture of Jesus Christ, not just in the US but worldwide.
Just as the King James Bible is the most printed book ever, at a billion copies, so “Head of Christ” is the most printed painting ever, at over 500 million copies.
It started in 1924 in Chicago among White Evangelical Protestants. It was spread by Sunday schools, by US soldiers, by Billy Graham’s billboards, by Baptist Bookstore, by missionaries. It appeared on bookmarks, calendars, Bibles, plates, stickers, puzzles, clocks, buttons and lamps.
During the Second World War religious groups gave US soldiers a wallet-sized “Head of Christ”. It helped to keep them alive, at least some of the Christian ones.
Even Hollywood, that great image factory, feels it cannot stray too far from this image of Jesus which has been so firmly planted into so many heads – an excuse it uses to cast actors of northern European descent as Jesus.
Walter Sallman, himself of northern European descent (Finnish and Swedish), was brought up in the (Swedish) Evangelical Covenant Church. He was a commercial artist based in Chicago, working for both religious publishers and ad agencies. “Head of Christ” has been compared to a shampoo ad – which is not far wrong given his training.
At 2.30am one winter’s morning in 1924 Sallman woke up:
“suddenly there appeared to my mind’s eye a picture of the Christ just as if it were on my drawing board.”
He was working on an issue of the Covenant Companion. He completed a charcoal sketch just before the 4.30pm deadline. It made the cover.
But the picture did not become a hit till he painted it in 1940.
It was probably not a vision from God but from the Ladies Home Journal, which in December 1922 printed “The Friend of the Humble” (1892) by French painter Léon Lhermitte:
Not-so-fun fact: 1924 was also the year the US government passed a law meant to keep Jews and other “alien races” from flowing into the country.
Race: The picture shows Jesus looking like a White person from northern Europe with long, flowing brown hair, blue eyes, and a Nordic nose. You cannot tell where he is.
No Jewish nose: In Sallman’s time Jews were stereotyped as having large bulbous or hooked noses, black curly hair and swarthy skin. Sallman’s Jesus has none of that.
Racially Jesus probably looked more like this:
Short black hair, brown eyes, light brown skin, wide nose. That is based on someone from Jesus’s time and place who was dug up and forensically reconstructed by the BBC in 2001.
Towards a more manly Jesus: Before the 1960s the main criticism of the picture was not about Jesus’ race but his manliness. In 1924 Sallman was himself trying to make a more manly, less androgynous Jesus. In the early 1960s he made a yet more “manly” Jesus in “Lord and Master”, giving Jesus shorter hair and a macho expression. It never caught on.
– Abagond, 2018.
Sources: mainly Google Images and Pinterest (2018); “The Color of Christ” (2012) by Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey; Christianity Today (2006); “The 20th Century” (1995) by David Wallechinsky.
See also:
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This picture certainly isn’t well known in Europe. European churches museums are full of paintings of Christ. This phony “arian” head just creates apostates.
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Wow — the resemblance to Lhermitte’s painting is so close as to suggest intentional plagiarism. Not just the face but also the pose, the upward-lifted eyes, the lighting.
Did he really have a vision that morning, or was he frantic to meet his deadline and started rummaging through old magazines for ideas? Hmm.
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Am reading the Color of Christ; The Son Of God And The Saga Of Race In America, by Edward J. Blum & Paul Harvey. This is such a coincidence that there would be a post on The Head of Christ by Warner Sallman, a midwestern painter who crafted his work first for Fundamentalist Christians. This mass produced image is what i have grown up with all my life while attending Sunday school and Black Churches, and in every home of friends and family and many Black households that professed Fundamentalists Christian beliefs.
Learning that the Puritans were iconoclast and never wanted images of God of any type of symbols such as crosses or any type of religious art. Warner Sallman was born in the 1890’s to European immigrants. His religious art went global but had local roots. He was inspired by a professor at Moody Bible Institute, an evangelical Bible college in Chicago, who asked for a more “manly” Jesus. Sallman’s new head originated as a charcoal sketch in the 1920’s, the decade Congress determined to restrict immigrants, and was then printed in a small evangelical denomination’s magazine.
The painted version exploded into national and world consciousness like no other piece of American art. This new Jesus had smooth white skin, long flowing brown hair, a full beard, and blue eyes. He wore a white robe, and the image stopped just beneath his shoulders.—The Color Of Christ, The Son Of God, The Saga Of Race In America by Edward J. Blum & Paul Harvey.
(Page 208) Civil Rights And The Coloring Of Christ
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@ Mary
“The Color of Christ” was one of my sources for this post. I am thinking of reading the whole book. Let me know what you think of it.
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It started in 1924 in Chicago among White Evangelical Protestants. It was spread by Sunday schools, by US soldiers, by Billy Graham’s billboards.
“Evangelical Protestants,” … huh, this is the main problem here. Primarily because most so-called “Evangelical Protestants are white. Esau has always attempted to paint the Messiah in the collective likeness or image of themselves. In fact, this was even prophesied in the Book of Esdras that this incident would happen. It has been said that this is one of the primary reasons why the Book of Esdras was taken out of the Holy Bible.
1 Maccabees 3:48 “And laid open the book of the law, wherein the heathen had sought to paint the likeness of their images.”
http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/religious-tradition/evangelical-protestant/#state
“Race: The picture shows Jesus looking like a White person from northern Europe with long, flowing brown hair, blue eyes, and a Nordic nose.”
John the Revelator said in Revelation 1:1 “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John:
And from here, a more detailed description of the Son of Man or Jesus Christ – Revelation 1:12-15 12 And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks; 13 And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle.14 His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; 15 And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.
Jesus’ eyes were not “blue”, they were red because he drank a lot of wine. So much so, he was referred to as a “winebibber.” (Matthew 11:19). Even today, a whole lot of so-called African American men still drink a lot of wine. (chuckles)
The texture of Jesus’ hair was like wool, He did not have “flowing brown hair.” The color of His hair was “white” like wool, not “brown” in color and flowing in texture.
The Bible does not touch base on the physiology or structure of His nose. However, I believe that any FAIR minded person would easily assume that if Jesus’ “feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace, which in turn would make Him a very dark man.
Even further, with his face be either a very dark brown or black in color. And people of color in the vast majority of instances would have either a somewhat or actually a wide nose, not Nordic.
Nordic – 1 : of or relating to the Germanic peoples of northern Europe and especially of Scandinavia 2 : of or relating to a group or physical type of the Caucasian race characterized by tall stature, long head, light skin and hair, and blue eyes – https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Nordic
In most instances, beginning around 1500, the image of Cesare Borgia began to be distributed as the Messiah. Cesare was an illegitimate son of Pope Alexander the VI of Rome. This Pope commissioned Leonardo da Vinci, yes, … the famous painter/sculptor who eventually became sexually involved with Cesare. Moreover, Cesare even had with his sister, Lucrezia and then subsequently killed his brother Juan in 1497.
Romans 1:23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man.
HBO: The Borgias 2011 TV Series – http://www.sho.com/the-borgias
http://guardianlv.com/2014/05/what-jesus-really-looked-like-prepare-to-be-shocked-video/
With Cesare’s painting distributed across the globe as being that of Jesus, the so-called elitarians were able to deceive the entire world that the Son of Man is in fact a European with “flowing hair,” … NOT!
Revelation 13:14 “And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast.” (Cesare)
The only thing in which Sallman may have been correct is that his depiction or vision of his so-called Christ had a distinctive, effeminate appearance, especially wearing a Toga. After all, Cesare Borgia was in fact at least bisexual.
I could go even further but I’ll stop here. The never ending folly of Esau attempting to write themselves into the scriptures should well known by. You people are not there, at least not in any virtuous manner!
Selah!
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“We believe that we have the precise image of what Jesus looked like on this earth,” said Professor Giulio Fanti of the University of Padua.
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