The traditional icon of Jesus has developed over the past two thousand years. Interestingly, the gospel writers avoid describing Jesus’s physical features. There are no known images of Christ in the early first centuries. In the 3rd and 4th centuries a few images emerge. Jesus is shown as young, often beardless, with shorter hair, in a tunic to his knees. As Christianity became adopted by Rome, images of Jesus of Jesus shift to match gods like Zeus, with longer hair, beard, and robes. In Byzantine times, the classic Christ pantocrator icon becomes established, and this is beautified by renaissance artists. Baroque painters dramatize and standardize a Euro-centric Jesus, reflecting both the icon and their culture. European trade and colonialism spread this icon. It is imported into and popularized in early America, being massed produced in the 19th century in countless tracts, Bibles, and periodicals. It becomes the standard look of Jesus throughout the 20th century.
This painting is my reflection on the inherited icon and image of Christ, exploring how Jesus is depicted in a variety of ways. Each of these individual images were painted on one painting. In it you see traditional portraits next to more abstracted ones, no beards on some with shorter hair, light, olive, and dark skinned images, various ethnicities, and symbolic colors represented the varied aspects of Christ's character.  The title of this painting is a play on the question that Jesus asked, "Whom say ye that I am?" in Matthew 16:15.   In the end, answering what Jesus looks like is less important to me than answering who Jesus is: the Redeemer of the world.
 
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