He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. (Isai 53:2-5, KJV)
This passage from the Songs of the Suffering Servant in the Hebrew Scriptures is considered by Christians to be a prophetic foreshadowing of the humiliation and physical abuse Christ endured in his redemptive death on the Cross. There is, certainly, nothing "comely" about the haunting, battered face of the thorn-crowned Jesus in this expressionist-styled serigraph by Czech Graphic Artist Ludmila Jirincova, considered by many to be the leading woman printmaker in pre-Communist Czechoslovakia. It represents a type of portraiture of Christ in his Passion known as "The Man of Sorrows" and can now be found on the East European Ex Libris page of the Schools of Sacred Art section. (John Kohan)