“Three Faced Max”
2025
oil on canvas
16 x 16 inches
In the fall, I stumbled upon this great YouTube channel called
@inspiraggio which does deep dives into some really incredible paintings from history and gives in-depth backstories and context into the creation of the pieces.
From one of the videos, I found out that in the early stages of Christianity, Artists didn’t know how to represent the trinity in artwork. An early trend emerged where artists would make painting of Jesus with three faces to solve this dilemma. However, from a branding perspective these paintings looked pagan and didn’t separate itself from the older religions of the time. This resulted in the church destroying paintings that featured this three faced Christ motif.
In order to save their work, some artists quickly painted over the two side faces hiding them with hair and thus saving their life’s work from being erased from history. Fast forward to modern times, as conservators ran tests on the paintings, to their surprise they found these three faced Jesus’s and began to restored some of them to their original states.
So I thought, why not make a Three Faced Max!
This painting and two others of mine are still up at
@anothergallery.denver for the current Residency Showcase along with an amazing collection of work! Don’t miss out and thank you to
@inspiraggio for the inspiration!
#art #arthistory #symbolism #symbolists #paintings #painting #oilpaint #oil #portrait #selfportrait #selfportraitpainting #maxwellroath #residency
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