The Many Faces of Christ : Portraying the Holy in the East and West, 300 to 1300 (Hardcover)

In "The Many Faces of Christ" Michele Bacci, who has written extensively on the history of religious images and cult-objects in Byzantium and the Medieval West, examines the complex historical and cultural dynamics underlying the making and final successful establishment of Christ s image between late Antiquity and the early Renaissance. Unlike earlier studies, the process is described against the background of ancient and biblical conceptions of beauty and the physical look as indicators of moral, ascetic, or messianic qualities. It takes into account a broad spectrum of both iconographic and textual sources and investigates the increasingly dominant role played by visual experience in Christian religious practice, which promoted belief in the existence of ancient documents of Christ s appearance and resulted in the shaping of portrait-like images, said to be true-to-life. Such phenomena are described in a comparative perspective, with glances at analogous processes in the Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, and Taoist traditions.
This book is of interest not only for specialists of Late Antique, Byzantine, and Medieval studies, but also for anybody interested in the historical figure of Jesus and its shifting, controversial conceptions over the course of history." Thanks to current portrayals of Jesus of Nazareth, we are apt to think of him as having long hair and a short beard. But, the holy scriptures do not describe Christ's physiognomy, and his representations are inconsistent in early Christian and medieval arts. How did this long-haired archetype come to be accepted in the late ninth century as the standard iconography of the Son of God? To answer this question, The Many Faces of Christ examines the complex historical and cultural dynamics underlying the making and final establishment of Christ's image between late antiquity and the early Renaissance.

Taking into account a broad spectrum of iconographic and textual sources, Michele Bacci describes the process of creating Christ's image against the backdrop of ancient and biblical conceptions of beauty and physicality as indicators of moral, ascetic, or messianic qualities. He investigates the increasingly dominant role played by visual experience in Christian religious practice, which promoted belief in the existence of ancient documents depicting Christ's appearance, and he shows how this resulted in the shaping of portrait-like images that were said to be true to life. With glances at analogous progressions in the Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, and Taoist traditions, this beautifully illustrated book will be of interest to specialists of Late Antique, Byzantine, and medieval studies, as well as anyone interested in the shifting, controversial conceptions of the historical figure of Jesus Christ.