The Christ Face in Art. By James Burns. (Duckworth and
Co. (hs.)—The author states the case for and against the probability that the face as we know it is founded on actual portraiture.
Briefly, the two sides may be thus summed up. At the time of our Lord there was a large amount of portraiture being done all over the Roman Empire, and so there was no reason why a portrait should not have been made. On the other hand, the earliest representations that have come down to us are of the conventional classic type, like the Good Shepherd of the Cata- combs of St. Calixtus and tho Lateran statue. The face as we know it in art emerged later. Mr. Burns gives a number of reproductions of representations of the face from different epochs of art, in which we see the enormous superiority in dignity and expressiveness of those of the Italian Renaissance. Among these, however, we miss one which is perhaps the most impressive of them all,—that of Piero della Francesca's "Resurrection."
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