Herbert Ward wrote > These do not look like baby faces to me. Especially around the eyes. I > guess it (the adult face) was a symbol of authority which the folks back > then needed to feel secure, like they needed kings and an infallible > omnipotent Church.
These are actually pretty mild examples of precocious-looking Jesuses (Jesi?). In earlier paintings that still have Byzantine traits, the Child is a miniature adult. The whole point, of course, is that this is no ordinary child, but from the very first has all the traits of the adult Jesus. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
