People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 27-25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 January 1896 — PORTRAITURES OF CHRIST. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

PORTRAITURES OF CHRIST.

Singular Diversion of Views by the Great Masters.

IT IS a singular faot that throughout the entire New Testament there is nothing regarding the personal appearance of Christ, and the early fathers of the church, who r doubtless knew something of how he looked while on | j earth, are equally jj=fj silont about it. A J portrait of him has been claimed by some to have come down from

apostolic times, and that copies of it were taken and are still extant. That this statement has no foundation in fact would appear to- be evident from the circumstance that the old masters, in their representations of the Saviour, follow no recognized model and are as various in such portraitures as wero their conceptions of what the real Christ should be. This diversity must be apparent to all who have examined such paintings in the Louvre and other large collections. In Fra F. Lippi’s “Madonna and Child,” for instance, an exquisite creation, the face of the infant Saviour, though perfect in contour, has a look of precocious intelligence which seems unnatural in ono so young. Carlo Dolce, Murillo and others, though displaying different types of child life, are perhaps equally successful in conveying a nearly satisfying ideal in their representations of tho child Christ. They all, however, pay no regard to ethnic considerations in their work, and as a result the face is Italian, French, Spanish or Flemish, &s the case may be, rather than Jewish, as it should have been. In paintings of the man Christ there is a still greater diversity noticeable, as would be naturally oxpected. Tho face of Christ in F. R. Francia’s painting, “The Virgin and Two Angtels Weeping Over the Dead Body of Christ,” is probably the divlnest conception of it ever traced on canvas. Though the face is evidently that of the dead, all the ernotlons of the soul seem

j£o be mirrored upon It. Tn Borgognone T s “Christ Bearing the Cross,” Correggio’s “Ecce Homo,” Guido Beni’s “Ecoe Homo,” all marvelous creations, as well as in others perhaps equally meritorious, however different they may be,.they at least convey an ideal Christ, which does not shock Christian sensibilities, as docs Munkacsy’s representation of the Saviour in his famous painting “Christ Before Pilate.” Neil Macdonald.