my Icons?

This is one of my favorite pictures of Jesus. Why? First of all it is all done in browns, but the other reason is the use of shadow and light. The artist (whose name I don't know) uses light and shadows to make a wafer and a chalice. The wafer is on the forehead and the chalice is on the temple.

I have seen this painting pretty much all my life. I've seen it on church walls, and living room walls. I've seen it on postcards and prayercards. I've seen it all over the place. One of my professors in college Dr. Duder, used the painting as an example of symbolism. Everytime I see this painting I stop and just wonder at it. If there is one "popular picture" that comes to mind when I read the gospels it is this one. For some reason this picture just seems to "fit" my idea of what Christ looked like. I realize that Christ was not a Blonde hair, blue eyed, German (believe it or not).


I need to do some research on the artist. I'm sure there is a story behind the painting. Just like there is a story behind the iconic praying hands. Which you can read here. The praying hands are important to me, too. I actually have a set of bookends of the praying hands. I inherited them somewhere along the way (they hold up my Shakespeare books). I think the reason that the hands intrique me is that I often find myself looking at others hands mainly because I am very conscious of my hands-- I have some warts on my hands and they make me selfconscious. I find myself keeping my hands in my pockets or hiding them somehow. I usually give my hand palm down when I shake hands.

I'm not sure where I was going with this, but suffice it to say that these two iconic images are important to me. For some reason I stutter a bit mentally when I see them. They are guides to, or maybe just place marks...