Kenneth Glad
A digital reconstruction has drawn attention because it offers a different kind of religious portrait. It presents a famous figure through software, art history and human interpretation rather than church tradition alone.
Dutch artist Bas Uterwijk released an AI-assisted portrait of Jesus Christ in 2020 as part of his wider work on historical faces.
Uterwijk, who has experience in special effects and computer graphics, has also made visual reconstructions of figures such as Julius Caesar, Seneca, Elizabeth I, Napoleon, Rembrandt and Tutankhamun, WP Tech reports.
The Jesus image does not follow the pale, European look most common in much Western religious art. Instead, it shows a figure with features more consistent with first-century Judea.
How it was made
According to WP Tech, Uterwijk used Artbreeder, a program based on neural networks and trained on large sets of human faces.
My Charisma quoted Uterwijk describing the tool: “[The artificial intelligence software] application makes it possible to combine multiple sources of faces and merge them in a synthesized version, guided by the artistic decisions of the user. I use it to create historical and fictional characters.”
WP Tech also cited Uterwijk’s explanation that he altered the hair and beard to better fit the time and place.
“I changed the hair and beard to a more reliable length and style for a given time and region,” he said.
Beyond tradition
Many European depictions of Jesus became dominant because Christian art developed for centuries through Roman, Byzantine and Renaissance traditions, where artists often reflected the faces and ideals of their own societies.
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Medium writes that the Bible gives no detailed physical description of Jesus, leaving later artists to imagine his appearance.
Uterwijk drew on older religious imagery, including Byzantine and Renaissance sources, while trying to avoid a purely European interpretation.
WP Tech compared Uterwijk’s AI-based method with the work of Swedish sculptor and archaeologist Oscar Nilsson, who uses 3D printing, anatomy, archaeology and DNA research in facial reconstructions.
Nilsson has recreated figures including a 1,200-year-old Peruvian noblewoman, a 9,000-year-old Greek teenager and the female “vampire” from Pień.
Uterwijk’s image is not evidence of what Jesus looked like. It is better understood as a visual experiment showing how old religious imagery can be re-examined with new digital tools.
Sources: WP Tech, Medium, My Charisma; Instagram posts by Bas Uterwijk.
