| Head of Christ | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Warner Sallman |
| Year | 1940 |
The Head of Christ, also called the Sallman Head, is a 1940 portrait painting of Jesus of Nazareth by American artist Warner Sallman (1892–1968). As an extraordinarily successful work of Christian popular devotional art,[1] it had been reproduced over half a billion times worldwide by the end of the 20th century.[2] Enlarged copies of the work have been made for churches, and small pocket or wallet-sized prayer cards bearing the image have been mass-produced for private devotional use.[1][3] The painting is said to have "become the basis for [the] visualization of Jesus" for "hundreds of millions" of people.[4][5]
- ^ a b Lippy, Charles H. (1 January 1994). Being Religious, American Style: A History of Popular Religiosity in the United States. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 185. ISBN 9780313278952. Retrieved 30 April 2014.
Of these one stands out as having deeply impressed itself of the American religious consciousness: the "Head of Christ" by artist Warner Sallman (1892-1968). Originally sketched in charcoal as a cover illustration for the Covenant Companion, the magazine of the Swedish Evangelical Mission Covenant of America denomination, and based on an image of Jesus in a painting by the French artist Leon Augustin Lhermitte, Sallman's "Head of Christ" was painted in 1940. In half a century, it had been produced more than five hundred million times in formats ranging from large-scale copies for use in churches to wallet-sized ones that individuals could carry with them at all times.
- ^ Blum, Edward J.; Harvey, Paul (21 September 2012). Color of Christ. UNC Press Books. p. 211. ISBN 9780807837375. Retrieved 30 April 2014.
By the 1990s, Sallman's Head of Christ had been printed more than 500 million times and had achieved global iconic status.
- ^ Wood, Ralph C. (2003). Contending for the Faith: The Church's Engagement with Culture. Baylor University Press. p. 63. ISBN 9780918954862.
Devotional images of a haloed and idealized Jesus—concentrating especially upon his face—thus came into immense vogue. Warner Sallman's Head of Christ and Heinrich Hofmann's Christ in Gethsemane were but the most popular among many hundreds of sentimental images of the Savior.
- ^ Lippy, Charles H. (1 January 1994). Being Religious, American Style: A History of Popular Religiosity in the United States. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 185. ISBN 9780313278952. Retrieved 30 April 2014.
There is, of course, no physical description of Jesus in the New Testament or in any other surviving early Christian literature. Yet for hundreds of millions, Sallman's depiction has become the basis for their visualization of Jesus, a Jesus who brings the sacred into the realm of the ordinary.
- ^ Prothero, Stephen (15 December 2003). American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 117. ISBN 9780374178901.
During the postwar revival of the 1940s and 1950s, as Protestants and Catholics downplayed denominational differences in order to present a united front against the menace of godless Communism, Sallman's Jesus became far and away the most common image of Jesus in American homes, churches, and workplaces. Thanks to Sallman (and the savvy marketing of his distributors), Jesus became instantly recognizable by Americans of all races and religions.