, or teaching the new doctrine to the
disciples, the type never varies. It is evident that the Christian
painters or sculptors of the first three centuries, in drawing or
modelling the head of Jesus, had no intention of making a likeness,
but only a conventional type, noble and classic, and suggestive of the
eternal youth of the Word. A new tendency appears in Christian art
towards the middle of the fourth century, the attempt to reproduce the
genuine portrait of Christ, or what was regarded as such by the
Orientals. The change was a consequence of the peace and freedom given
to the Church, and of the cessation of that overbearing contempt in
which the Gentiles had held a religion which they believed to be that
of the vile followers of a crucified Jew. It had been considered
prudent, at the outset, to present the Redeemer to the neophytes, who
were not yet entirely free from pagan ideas, in a type which was
familiar and pleasing to the Roman eye, rather than with the
characteristics of a despised race. The triumph of the Church made
these precautions unnecessary, and then arose the desire of exhibiting
a truer portraiture of Christ. The first addition to the conventional
type was that of the beard, and probably of the hair parted in the
middle.

[Illustration: The portrait head of Jesus in the Sancta Sanctorum.]

[Illustration: THE IDEAL ROMAN FIGURE OF CHRIST]

Ancient writers have left but little information about the personal
appearance of the Saviour; and the vagueness of their accounts proves
the absence of a type which was universally recognized as authentic.
Many documents concerning this subject must be rejected as forgeries
of a later age. Such is the pretended letter of Lentulus, governor of
Judaea, to the Senate, describing the appearance of Jesus. In the same
way we should regard the images attributed to Nicodemus and Luke, and
those called _acheiropitae_ (not painted by human hands), like the
famous one of the chapel of the Sancta Sanctorum,[167] the first
historical mention of which dates from A. D. 752, when Pope Stephen
II. carried it in a procession from the Lateran to S. Maria Maggiore,
to obtain divine protection against Aistulphus. Garrucci questions
whether it may not be that of Camulianus, described by Gregory of
Nyssa; or a copy of the image alleged to have been sent by the Saviour
himself to Abgar, king of Edessa,[168] with an autograph letter. Must
we consider these and other portraits, like