I have recently stumbled upon the claim that during his papacy, Pope Alexander VI felt that the Semitic and Arab looking images of Christ where not to his liking so he commissioned the creation of new portraits of Jesus, with his son Cesare as the model, hence the Caucasian looking image of Jesus that is popular in Western culture. Is this a laughable rumor or is there any basis to this?
I'm tempted to call it laughable considering depictions of Christ like this icon from the monastery at mount Sinai or this page from a Syriac Gospel Book are roughly a millenium older than the papacy of Alexander VI. They pretty much show Jesus already looking like he does on most modern representations.
I'm honestly just curious where people find this claim; it seems like an interesting myth.
