Christianity? Throughout the Middle Ages in Europe, he was often portrayed as very somber—a dour, long-faced Jesus either serenely teaching, or performing a miracle, or writhing in pain on a cross. Alternately, Jesus was often depicted as the risen and ruling king, fully robed and with the crown of thorns replaced with a golden diadem and scepter. But what about in the earliest centuries of the Christian faith? How was Jesus depicted in early Christian art? This matters because how Jesus was painted