Rembrandt paintings that changed how world saw Christ on exhibit

Submitted on September 14, 2011

Lou Baldwin | Catholic News Service

“Head of Christ” attributed to Rembrandt van Rijn, a holding of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is among six such paintings created by the Dutch master and his students that have been brought together for the first time in the exhibit “Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus.” The panels present Christ as a young, humble, tender figure with dark hair and olive skin. The exhibit is showing at the Philadelphia museum through Oct. 30 and then moves to the Detroit Institute of Art.

CNS/Philadelphia Museum of Art

PHILADELPHIA — Matthew, Mark, Luke and John told us all about what Jesus said and did, but not one of them mentioned what he looked like. The vaguely European-featured Jesus with a brown beard and hair was pretty much the standard for most of history, at least until Rembrandt van Rijn, the greatest painter, draftsman and printmaker of the Dutch Golden Age, came along. In the mid-17th century he and students at his Amsterdam studio painted a series of at least eight heads of Christ that set the liturgical art world on its ear.