Digital artists have recreated the face of Jesus – and he’s nothing like the man depicted in Renaissance paintings, British reports say. The 3D image of Christ was made using the Shroud of Turin, the linen sheet believed to have been laid on the body of Jesus in his tomb, London’s Daily Telegraph reports. “There’s a long tradition in Christian theology and Christian history of seeking the face of Christ – of wanting to know what he was like as a man,” Catholic priest and author Father Jonathan Morris told US television network ABC News. But the new image of one of the key figures in Christianity – which will be unveiled on a History Channel program – is expected to rouse some controversy, as it is a far cry from the fair man painted by Renaissance artists.

Jesus – in this 3D version – is swarthy and 1.72 metres tall, compared to the paintings representation of Jesus as fair, slim and tall. “I have a lot of information about that face and my estimation is we’re pretty darn close to what this man looked like,” digital artists Ray Downing, who was the lead artist on the project, told ABC News. “The solution was to realise that the shroud wasn’t hanging on the wall – it was wrapping a corpse. That’s the crux of the problem – the face is hidden in there,” he said. Downing said he and his team used the imprints on the cloth to get a “blueprint” of Jesus’ image. But he added that the marks on the Shroud alone were not enough to recreate the complete figure.

“Inevitably, you do run out of information.

“You can’t see the pores in a linen fabric. There are no eyebrows. It doesn’t take a lot of guesswork to assign pores and skin texture to a model, to know that the man did have eyebrows and to provide them. “At some point, you do have to leave the realm of actual information and use experience.”

The Shroud of Turin itself has been a subject of debate. When it was carbon dated in 1988 by scientists, it appeared to have been created in the 13th century, and not during Jesus’ lifetime, thus suggesting it was fake. The relic is going on display at Turin Cathedral in Italy next month.