In King’s College Chapel at Cambridge the central figure in the great east window, usually mistaken for God Almighty, is really Pontius Pilate; and I am always pleased to see him on his judgement-seat up there--it is some compensation for the ignorant abuse that is poured out on him from pulpits. In the case before the Court the Prisoner had pleaded guilty--‘thou sayest’--to the charge of claiming to be a King: the Prosecution would not allow the charge to be withdrawn; and the Judge was bound to pass the sentence which the Law prescribed.
I fancy Pilate may have misinterpreted a phrase. Julius Cæsar had been canonized as ‘divus,’ and Augustus therefore styled himself ‘divi filius,’ and afterwards was also canonized as ‘divus.’ But while ‘divi filius’ and ‘dei filius’ were quite distinct in Latin, they were both translated into Greek as ‘theou uios.’ (There is no question of misreadings here: the phrase is in inscriptions and on coins.) Saint Paul says that the Gentiles thought his doctrines ‘foolishness,’ and Pilate might think it ‘foolishness’ for anyone to claim to be a son of God; but it would be a serious matter for anyone to claim to be a son of the late Emperor, especially if he also claimed to be a King.
The ancient portraits of Christ are of two different types, the oldest portraits making him a beardless youth, and more recent portraits making him a bearded man. The very old portraits agree with the tradition (Luke, II. 2) that the Nativity was at the time of the census by Quirinius. That was at the end of 6 or beginning of 7 A.D., and the Crucifixion may have been as early as the spring of 27 A.D., as Pilate was in office then: in which case there obviously could not be any genuine portraits of Christ above the age of twenty. The more recent portraits agree with the traditions that make Christ over thirty at the Crucifixion. But in these portraits it is another kind of face, not the same face in maturer years; and the youthful face is usually much pleasanter, betokening a Deity who would delight in turning water into wine.
I should account for the two heads by saying that the bearded head was originally meant for John the Baptist, and mistaken afterwards for Christ. At any rate, John has a bearded head like this in those early representations of the Baptism where Christ is portrayed as a beardless youth. But the bearded head is universally accepted now, and it has been idealized. The greatest of these imaginary portraits is Leonardo da Vinci’s in his fresco of the Last Supper--at any rate it was so when I first saw it (1869) and for some years after that, but when I saw it last (1913) the whole fresco had been washed over with some preservative, and it did not seem the same. Perhaps Leonardo had read more into the Gospels than is really there: one might think that Christ was saying sorrowfully, those were the best disciples he could get, and what a gang they were--if one of them did not betray him, another one would. There is the gesture of the hands, and the face is full of disappointment and disdain.