Firstly, it’s important to understand that the pre-modern world did not think about race the way we do today. Modern concepts such as “white”, “black”, or “person of color” would have been quite alien to someone from medieval or Renaissance Europe. In fact, Eurocentrism and white supremacist ideas, as we understand them today, did not really start to take shape until the Age of Exploration when the economic and military power of European polities began to surpassing that of the Ottomans, the Mongols, and other formerly formidable non-European societies (so, around the 1400-1500’s). This was after a millennia and a half worth of Christian artwork had already been produced. Plenty of bigotry of various types has always existed, of course, especially of a religious nature. But a painter from 15th century Germany or 3rd century Constantinople or 11th century France would not understand these things the way we do.

A large portion of Christian art was created by Europeans. Obviously, they crafted images of Christ that reflected their own cultures. At the same time, it was generally presumed during those times, as now, that Jesus would have looked something like the other inhabitants of the costal Levant in the 1st century. That is to say, swarthy, but not necessarily dramatically so. Even modern scientific and historical attempts to determine what Jesus would have looked like produce a vaguely Mediterranean looking dude. It wasn’t until the 19th century that any significant number of Europeans began to suggest that Jesus wasn’t really a Jew, and might actually have been “white”. Jesus was, for most of Christian history, understood as racially Jewish (or at least Jewish-ish) and, accordingly, would appear somewhere along the lines of what we in the 21st century would reasonably describe as white. It cannot be stressed enough, however, that our modern concepts of race and ethnic identity are actually quite recent ones.

Our impression of these artists’ impression of Christ’s appearance is also somewhat skewed by some very European-looking renditions of Jesus from Northern Europe, which rightfully seem rather absurd to modern observers. While these are almost certainly quite inaccurate, there are many centuries worth of artwork from Christians in places like North Africa and the Middle East where sizable Christian populations have existed since before the Christianization of places like England and the Germanic tribes. Much of this artwork portrays a decidedly swarthier Christ, often with nappier hair as well. Many icons and other depictions of Christ from the Orthodox tradition also portray a much more “ethnic” Jesus. The Catholic Church also teaches that, whenever Jesus or Mary makes a miraculous appearance, they take the appearance of the local people. So, if He were appearing to a peasant in China, Jesus would look East Asian.