Head of Christ

Rembrandt painted the Head of Christ around 1648-56, one of a series of small studies of Christ's face that represent one of the most original contributions to Christian iconography since the Byzantine period. Rather than working from the idealized conventions of Italian Renaissance Christs — the golden-haired, symmetrically beautiful figure derived ultimately from classical Apollo — Rembrandt modeled from a young Jewish man living in Amsterdam's Jewish quarter, producing a face of extraordinary gentleness, authenticity, and Semitic particularity. The series represented a theological argument as well as an artistic innovation: by insisting on Christ's historical Jewish identity, Rembrandt was challenging centuries of Europeanizing idealization. Amsterdam's large Sephardic Jewish community — refugees from Portugal who had established a prosperous presence in the city — gave Rembrandt unprecedented access to models whose features corresponded to the historical reality of Christ's origins. The Bode Museum in Berlin holds this example as part of the German public collections' significant representation of Rembrandt's religious works.

The small panel is painted with extraordinary tenderness, the soft modeling of the face and the warm brown eyes conveying a quiet humanity, with Rembrandt's characteristically loose brushwork visible in the hair and garment.