For centuries, Jesus Christ has been represented from a Eurocentric vision: as a white man, with long, light brown hair and blue eyes. This is how we have seen him in movies and in art and this is how he has also represented him. Salustiano García in it Sevillian Holy Week poster how much controversy has raised.

The painter’s intention, as he himself pointed out in laSexta Xplica, was to portray Jesus Christ in a majestic way: “Represent the god that was inside Christ, a beautiful person, with a serene look,” he detailed this Saturday. His son was his model and the resulting poster was the reason for the commotion. On social media she has been the subject of homophobic comments and critics who consider it an image too naked, without expression of suffering or even “sexualized”.

However, the truth is that this image It is not far from what has been reproduced forever.. “Since the 15th century we have found Christs practically naked, even veiled by purity cloths that reveal even more what has been hidden in this Salustiano poster,” explains Francisco Javier Segura, a graduate in Art History.

An example of this is the work of the Italian artist Guido Reniwho portrayed Christ almost naked and with a loose pose as early as 1620. Years before, he himself Miguel Angel He did it in the same way in the Christ of Minerva and even in Spain several parishes have similar figures, such as that of the Risen Christ in Alicante.

The similarity is evident if we compare Salustiano’s painting with the Risen Christ of the Guadalcanal Church, also in Seville, as can be seen in the video that illustrates these lines. “There is no canon: neither Christ dressed, nor with a shroud, nor naked, but everything It has been evolving and changing depending on the time and the skill or creative capacity of its author,” summarizes Segura.

Indeed, representations of Christ such as the one that has now generated controversy are not new: in painting, sculpture and even cinema, where a bloody or painful Christ has not always been represented. In the film ‘King of Kings’, Jeffrey Hunter plays a young man of great beauty and without a harsh expression of suffering. And there are ways to capture Jesus as artistic visions that created them.