Modern paintings of Jesus: how artists paint Christ today

Somewhere in your house there is a wall you look at more than any other. For a lot of women it is the one across from the bed, or the one you face from the kitchen sink. If you have been thinking about putting Jesus on it, you have already noticed that modern paintings of Jesus split two ways.

Some paint him as a man you could meet, with weight and weather and a face that looks back at you. Others pull away from the face and let a hand, a silhouette or a wash of light stand in for him.

Nearly all of them are one or the other, and both have roots in Scripture. Here is how painters make that choice, and how to make yours.

We cover what contemporary Christian art is and where it came from elsewhere. This piece stays with Jesus himself.

What do modern paintings of Jesus look like now?

Picture two paintings side by side on a shop wall. In the first, a portrait so lifelike it could be a photograph of a man from first-century Galilee. In the second, a figure reduced to a shape of light, recognizable only because you already know who it must be. Nearly everything painted today sits somewhere between them.

The lifelike end was fixed in the public mind by the mass-reproduced portraits of the mid-twentieth century: soft light, three-quarter view, brown hair to the shoulders, eyes lifted a little. You may have grown up with one in a grandmother's hallway.

The other end came out of modern painting proper, from artists who stopped trying to show what Jesus looked like and tried to show what standing near him felt like: heavy outlines and stained-glass color, a figure dissolved in gold, a cross with no body on it.

Painters working today borrow from both. More of them now choose the scene over the portrait, and there is a plain reason. A portrait makes a claim about his face. A scene makes a claim about what he did, and that is a far easier claim to stand behind.

The best of it is a figure you can name from the doorway and a moment you can step into when you come close.

How do painters use light, and why does it matter for my room?

Light is where a painting of Jesus succeeds or fails. Nearly every one that has lasted, including the famous paintings of Jesus from past centuries, has a clear source of light, and he is either standing in it or he is the source.

Painters now do this a few ways. Some put a single warm light behind or above the figure, so the face is half in shadow and the edges glow; that is the halo's modern descendant.

Others flood the scene with the thin light of first thing in the morning, before anyone else is up. A third group keeps the ground nearly black and lets a hand or a face come out of it, which is a very old idea made new.

Palette follows the room. Paintings made for homes now run quieter than their ancestors: sea blues, warm ivory, ochre, soft teal, the browns of sand and wood. The crimson and cobalt of the old devotional prints has mostly gone, because a loud palette does not survive in a white or gray living room. It shouts at the couch.

Why do so many of them not show his face?

Look through a set of recent paintings and you will notice how often Jesus has his back to you, or is a shape against the light, or is nothing but a pair of hands. That is partly reverence. It is partly honesty about what nobody knows.

Hands are the most common answer: a hand breaking the surface of water, a hand on a shoulder, hands holding a lamb or breaking bread. Hands carry the action of nearly every Gospel scene, and they belong to no face in particular, so they can show rescue or tenderness without deciding what he looked like.

The turned figure is the other answer. Jesus walking away along a shoreline, or seated on a hillside with his back to you and the crowd in front. Many people find this the most inviting version, because it puts you where the disciples were, a few steps behind, following.

Some of this is cultural: the fair-skinned Jesus of the old prints was one culture's picture, and people know it now. Some of it goes deeper than culture.

Should anyone paint his face at all?

The Bible never describes what Jesus looked like. The one Old Testament passage the church has long read as a portrait of the Messiah says his looks were nothing to remark on. So whether to paint the face is a question of conscience, and Christians have answered it differently for a very long time.

Isaiah writes, "For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him" (Isaiah 53:2, KJV).

Christians from the earliest centuries have read this chapter as speaking of Christ; that is an interpretation, though a very old and widely held one. Taken that way, it describes a face that would not have turned heads in the grocery store, which cuts against the whole tradition of the serene, handsome Jesus.

The commandment stands behind the question too: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth" (Exodus 20:4, KJV).

Christians have disagreed sharply about what this means for pictures of Christ. The Eastern church went through a long dispute over images in the eighth and ninth centuries and came down in favor of them, on the grounds that God had himself taken a visible human body.

Some Reformed churches have historically declined to picture Christ at all. If you grew up in one of them, you already know the argument.

A blog post does not settle a thousand-year-old question. What we can tell you is what the painters we admire seem to have concluded: a painting of Jesus is not a claim to know his face, and should not pretend to be one.

It puts a Gospel moment in front of you so that you think about it more often, on the stairs, at the sink, on the way to bed.

Painters who hold that view keep the face soft and let the light carry the weight. When they do paint a portrait, they paint a steady, ordinary face, closer to Isaiah's tender plant than to a film star.

Jesus told Thomas, "blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed" (John 20:29, KJV). A good painting knows it is not the seeing. It is a help toward the believing.

Oil or watercolor: which one suits a home?

An oil painting of Jesus gives you depth, dark grounds and glowing light. A watercolor of Jesus gives you softness, transparency and air. Neither is better. They suit different rooms, and probably different rooms in your own house.

Oil, or acrylic used like oil, is behind most of what people picture when they say a modern painting of Christ.

It holds a nearly black background with one face coming out of it, builds brushwork thick enough to read as texture from the far side of the room, and takes the warm, saturated light that makes a storm or a rescue feel physical. The painting that anchors a living room wall is almost always oil.

Watercolor works from white paper outward, so the light is in the picture before the first stroke. It is at its best in gentle scenes, a figure at dawn or the Good Shepherd in a pale field, and it belongs in bedrooms, nurseries and the corner where you read.

It is less forgiving at large sizes: the softness that reads as tenderness at arm's length can read as fog from the sofa. Printed on canvas, the gap narrows but does not vanish.

How do our two canvases handle the face?

In His Presence is a portrait, the only one we have made. Reaching Through the Water is a scene where his face is nearly out of the picture. Between them they show the two ways we think a painting of Jesus can be honest.

In His Presence gives you a face: steady gaze, gentle light, no halo, no eyes rolled toward heaven. We wanted the man of Isaiah 53 rather than the man of the old calendars, someone you would trust across a kitchen table.

We paired it with his own words: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28, KJV). It is a piece for the place where you pray or read, not the wall people walk past.

Reaching Through the Water takes the other road. You are under the surface, looking up, and the sharpest thing in the painting is a hand coming down toward you, palm open. His face is above the water, softened by the surface and the light.

The scene is Matthew's: "And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him" (Matthew 14:31, KJV). The painting takes Peter's viewpoint as he sinks; that vantage is our interpretation, while the Gospel gives the words and the order of events. A hand does not need to look like anyone. It only needs to arrive.

Both are printed to order on matte cotton-polyester canvas over a solid pine stretcher, made to order in the US, frameless or in a natural or black pine frame, with hanging hardware included. They and our other painted scenes are gathered in the contemporary Christian art collection.

How do I pick the right one for my house?

Choose the scene before the style, and the light before the size. Everything else is detail, and most of it sorts itself out once those two are settled.

Start with which moment you want to walk past every day. A portrait is for a place where you sit still: the chair where you pray, the nightstand, the desk. A scene is for a wall you pass or a room you share with the family; choosing Christian wall art for the living room is its own question.

If you are buying for someone in a hard season, a diagnosis, a divorce, a first year alone, a scene of rescue or carrying will usually serve better than a face. They do not have to meet his eyes to feel his hand.

Then look hard at the light. Squint at the image on your phone until it blurs; if the figure still stands out and you can tell where the light comes from, it will read on a wall.

Ask what you are buying, too. An original, a print of one, and a design assembled from stock elements are three different things, and an honest studio will tell you which.

Matte canvas avoids glare under a lamp; a solid wood stretcher will not warp. Our canvases come in six sizes from 8x12 to 30x40 inches, frameless from $59 or framed from $129. The smallest sits on a shelf beside your Bible. The largest carries a wall on its own.

What is it like to live with a picture of Christ?

Whatever a painter decides about the face, the point of a picture of Jesus in your home is not that it looks like him. Nobody alive knows what he looked like.

The point is that you will pass it on an ordinary Wednesday, tired, with the dishwasher running, and it will remind you of a hand that reached down, an invitation to rest, a shepherd who did not run.

Jesus said, "I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life" (John 8:12, KJV). A painting cannot be that light. At its best, it is a window on the wall across from your bed, and it faces the right way.

Frequently asked

What is meant by Christ in modern art?

The figure of Jesus as painted or sculpted from the early twentieth century onward, when artists moved from lifelike Gospel scenes toward symbol and abstraction. Today it also covers a loosely painted Gospel scene finished this year.

What did Jesus actually look like?

The Gospels do not say. He was a Jewish man from first-century Galilee, and Isaiah 53:2, which Christians have long read as speaking of him, says there was no beauty in his appearance to draw the eye. Any face you hang is a painter's guess, and the good painters know it.

Is it wrong to have a painting of Jesus in the house?

Christians disagree, and have for centuries. Most traditions accept images of Christ as aids to prayer and remembrance; some Reformed churches decline them out of respect for the second commandment. If your church holds the second view, a Gospel scene without a face, or Scripture art with no figure at all, is the better choice.

Passages cited: Isaiah 53:2; Exodus 20:4; John 20:29; Matthew 11:28; Matthew 14:31; John 8:12