One of the biggest mysteries of our time is how Jesus Christ actually looked. No single image is ever going to get it 100% right. Even if we had the technology to have a photograph, it still could not encapsulate all who Jesus was and is. I’m sure we’ve all seen a picture of ourselves and wondered, “Is that how I really look?”

Scripture is pretty scarce when it comes to a physical description of his looks, yet that hasn’t stopped thousands of artists from creating their own interpretation. As with all art, any image is up to interpretation. Just as we are constantly translating scripture to discover its meaning, we are constantly interpreting art to share with us its message.

When it comes to Christian imagery, I would argue that there are at least three categories of imagery pertaining to Jesus: historical, Christological, and relational.

Historical images are going to portray Jesus as more historically accurate; painting him with traditional features and characteristics of a first century Jewish man living in Israel, such as darker skin, short curly hair, and a beard. Some forensic archeologists have even worked to create a true image of Jesus based off of excavated skull shapes from that time. Historical images seek to portray whom Jesus was as a man, a living person from history, to give more authenticity to the scriptures that he actually lived and breathed and died (and rose again).

A Christological image of Jesus is one that focuses more on his divinity and his God-like nature. These images often focus less on his human aspects and more on his holiness. Many images will portray Jesus with a golden halo, floating in the air, or even light pouring forth from his crucifixion wounds. These images tend to elevate Jesus above human status and show how different he was from us.

Relational images of Jesus are designed to paint Jesus just like us. These are the images that make Jesus in humanity’s image instead of recognizing that humanity was made in God’s. By seeking to make Jesus understandable to modern audiences, perhaps this is where we acquired so many images that paint Jesus to look like the artist’s intended audience. Depending on the image’s origin, we find Jesus can appear very Americanized, Caucasian, Black, Asian, etc. Perhaps it is the artist’s way of making an obscure concept of someone portrayed as both God and human into a more relatable reality.

Similar to the sacraments of Holy Communion and Baptism that use physical and tangible objects to portray harder to grasp concepts of grace and forgiveness, these relational images seek to bring Jesus down to an understandable reality. St. Augustine’s definition of the sacraments as an “outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace” lends itself to the same need to make Jesus, who in our time is very intangible, into a concept we can better grasp.

One concern with each of these categories comes from the limitations they each portray. When an image reaches for a purely historically accurate portrayal, we recognize that any one image will never get it fully right, since we do not know exactly what Jesus looked like when he lived on earth. Any Christological image runs the risk of losing an audience as seeing Jesus as too unapproachable and otherworldly, where he loses some of his humanity. And a relational image created in our own image will likely only relate to a limited audience for which it was intended. These images may further divide humanity in their understanding of Jesus based on their differences, rather than draw them together in their similarities.