http://theedge.bostonherald.com/artsNews/edgeArts.bg?articleid=760

The iconography of the Passion and the rendering of Jesus changed as cultures and styles evolved throughout the history of western art, said Pamela Berger, a professor of medieval art history at Boston College.

Artists from the early middle ages often depicted a triumphant Jesus, with his head up and arms thrust out in victory on the cross. At a time when Christians were striving to convert people in the Roman Empire, they didn’t want to portray a vulnerable, stricken savior.

“People didn’t want to show a victimized, suffering God in these early years,” Berger said.

Renderings of the Passion from this period often depicted Jesus as a youthful, beardless adolescent, said Deborah Kahn, an art history professor at Boston University.

Beginning in the 13th century, images of the Passion became a lot gorier as a new emphasis on the physical agony and suffering of the Christ figure emerged, Berger said.

Into the 14th century, Christ on the cross is often portrayed as gaunt and bony, with protruding ribs and lots of blood flowing from his wounds, Kahn said.

With the return to classic Greek forms that characterized the high Renaissance, Jesus was depicted in an idealized male form in the 15th and early 16th centuries. Paintings from this period often featured a strong, handsome, muscular figure with a beautiful, elegantly posed body.

“The Dead Christ with Angels” painted in the 1520s by Rosso Fiorentino, is among the great Renaissance masterpieces in the MFA collection, said Ilchman. The work features a handsome, redheaded Christ with a muscular physique falling into the arms of four young male angels.

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… looking at it a bit closer, and the tit-for-tat of the conversation points out that the change in Jesus depictions occurred a century before the Black Plague.