Why did Michelangelo paint images of Jesus as if he were Anglo/Saxon or Germanic looking?

Question

Wasn't there someone that Michelangelo knew that could have told him that Jesus was Brown or possibly Black?

I think it's an error on the part of the artist that made Jesus out to be European/White with blue eyes and medium blond hair.

Answer 1

The artist painted a Jesus that is similar to his culture. This was not a mistake. This was intentionally. Jesus was not White. The bible say so. If you notice, Michelangelo paintings are always similar to the looks of people in his culture.

Answer 2

He used models who were available to him, and most of them were more Meditteranean/Italian in appearance rather than anglo or germanic. Plus, if you think about it, the Holy Lands tended to have a lot of Greek/Roman features, rather than nubian or from deeper Africa or India. So, the Greek/Roman look was probably as accurate as was necessary.
As for the blond/blue-eyed look... that was always the ideal for the whole meditteranian area for what gods looked like. Wasn't Alexander the Great supposedly blond/blue-eyed? And there are still a very large number of people in the levantine area who are blond/blue-eyed, even though semitic.

So, thin k what you want, but blue eyes and blondish hair were probably the correct way of portraying Christ ( but not the nordic blond/blue eye look; more of a honey blond and a bit darker blue, a pig's eye blue).

Answer 3

I think that there were already accounts of how he looked like Michelangelo could base on ^_^
That said, Imagine that written in the bible!
"Thus the Lord was ressurected after 3 days. His masculine black body blocked the sun as He was raised from the dead. He exclaimed: "Yo where my bitches at?" and his followers cheered."
... Too much whisky.

Answer 4

Michelangelo used a WASPY looking model for good reason. The Catholic church was trying to woo middle-European pagans into Christianity, and they were highly suspicious of Jews. To have depicted Christ, Mary, Joseph, the Disciples as Jews would have not helped the conversion. Ergo, to appeal to middle Europeans, biblical figures were depicted to look like them.