Image Details

National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

The Savior (1900–1905) by American artist Henry Ossawa Tanner. Strong face and figure combine with soft brush strokes to create a powerful image of Jesus at prayer. Thanks to new discoveries of textual materials—among them the Dead Sea Scrolls—scholars have found numerous aspects of Judaism contemporaneous with Jesus that could provide an appropriate context for understanding his Jewishness.