The face of Christ

The Faces of Christ is a sumptuous treasury of world art depicting Jesus Christ.

From early on in the history of Christianity artists--great and unknown--have shown the human face of God in paint, sculpture, print, and any other possible media.

The Faces of Christ takes a chronological view looking at the way Jesus's image has been portrayed at different times in different cultures.The first preserved Christian images emerge from about 70 a.d., as recorded in the archeological findings at the church in Megiddo, and the oldest Christian sculptures are from sarcophagi dating to the beginning of the 2rd century.

As Christianity became more important and was adopted as state religion of the Roman Empire, so Christian art blossomed.

Indeed, much of the art surviving from Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire is Christian art.

As a stable Western European society emerged during the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church led the way in terms of art, using its resources to commission paintings and sculptures.

Christian art is found in architecture principally in the form of churches, cathedrals, monasteries and tombs.In all of this the face of Christ is a focal point, whether it be as a baby in the images of Virgin and Child, during his ministry, at the Last Supper, during his last hours on the Cross, or in more symbolic guise--as the Good Shepherd or Light of the World. This extraordinary book shows some 200 images of Christ from the early years a.d. to moden times.