“I never thought about it, Joseph,” I replied. “Since my youth, I have probably seen thousands of paintings and drawings and sculptures of him, as have most people, and I guess I just assumed that I knew.”

Somehow I sensed he was toying with me. He had that now familiar twinkle in his old eyes. “But isn’t it a mistake, Matthias, for anyone conducting an investigation to assume anything? Certainly, your famous detective creations would never solve their mysteries, in your books, if you allowed them to assume very much. Am I correct?”

I nodded, not knowing what to expect. Not even daring to guess! The old man reached into the folds of his tunic and removed another key, smiling broadly as he turned and walked toward the bronze door on the room’s near side. He turned the key but waited until I was at his side before he pulled the door wide open. Inside what was no more than a closet, illuminated by a glass overhead window, was the statue of a man, life-size—in marble.

“Matthias, in my opinion this is the greatest work of my sculptor, Hermogenes.”

“Jesus?” I cried out.

He nodded calmly. “It was done without my knowledge. Hermogenes would go of his own accord to hear Jesus in the Temple courtyard, and when he returned to his studio here he would make drawings from memory. Working from those drawings, in secret, he created what you see—a perfect likeness of our Lord.”

The sandal-shod feet of the marble figure stood firmly on the floor, with no pedestal of any sort beneath them, so that when I moved closer I was face to face with probably the only portrayal that had ever been made of Jesus from life. Hermogenes had, indeed, done a masterful job. Even in the monochrome of white marble, the figure looked as if it might move and talk at any moment because of the diffused sunlight from overhead. I studied every feature, trying to burn them all into my memory.

The hair of Jesus was parted in the middle, flowing loosely down his back but pushed away from his face so that his earlobes were discernible. His forehead was wide, above full eyebrows and deeply set eyes. The nose was long with only a slight bend and the mouth was full. Both his mustache and beard were trimmed, if not too carefully, and his high cheekbones sloped down to a pointed chin. His height, if Hermogenes had been accurate in his scale, was the same as mine, approximately six feet—tall for a Jew of that time. More than any other likeness I could recall, he looked like the Jesus in an oil by Ralph Pallett Coleman. I had once admired a large copy of Coleman’s work hanging in the chaplain’s office at Scottsdale Memorial Hospital, and Arthur Howard had been kind enough to send me a smaller reproduction for my studio.