"What some have considered 'a veritable emblem of the Protestant faith' has, in many ways, become to many an icon in the (LDS) Church," he wrote. "Each year, 3.5 million people view the Christus on Temple Square and another 2 million see six different copies of it in LDS visitors centers throughout the world." It also appears in a variety of other LDS venues, including the church's official Web site.

Richardson chronicles how top church leaders came to acquire their first copy of the "Christus" in 1959 as a visual proclamation to the world that Latter-day Saints are Christians. Yet the sculptor, Bertel Thorvaldsen, finished the piece in 1833 after being commissioned to create the work for the Lutheran Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen, where the original still stands.

"For many people of faith, what matters more than anything is growing close to their standard of Jesus. They want to have this intimacy," Morgan said, noting most have an image in their mind that's been there since childhood. "They went to Sunday School and saw pictures hanging on the wall of a slender, solemn man with brown hair and big eyes. He's been etched on the inside of their minds."

That "Nordic Jesus" has little resemblance to what are believed to be the earliest artistic images of Christ, some of which can still be seen in the Roman catacombs, where early Christians buried their dead and often portrayed him as the symbolic "good shepherd." While there is no authenticated account detailing what Christ looked like, a few descriptions and images surfaced during the centuries after his death purporting to detail his features, among them the Shroud of Turin and the Veil of Veronica — both supposedly imprinted with the physical likeness of Christ's face.

Another is a letter that surfaced about 1,000 years ago and was attributed to a man named Publius Lentulus, who claimed to have been a contemporary of Jesus, Morgan said. He supposedly wrote to the Roman Senate detailing a very literal description of Christ's face — "brown, shoulder-length hair, large eyes — some versions say blue eyes — a long sunken face, very solemn and serious, with a short, cropped beard. If you look at a lot of pictures, that's exactly what he looks like."

Of course the letter was written after the visual tradition was already established, with the idea of authenticating it, Morgan said.

Other depictions have come as a result of dreams or visions recorded by clergy, laymen and even the artists themselves.