October 4, 2003 journal, the famous head of Jesus by Warner Sallman found plagiarized.

Believed to have sold 1 billion copies in the world in church baptisteries everywhere and now reported to have been copied by Sallman from Leon Lhermitte from France in 1892.

Websites <mfa.org/artemis/fullrecord.asp?oid=31032> "Art of Europe. History of owner- ship: please note: information on history of ownership given here is based on compilations made in the 1980s. This information is now in the process of being reviewed, and will be corrected and updated as research progresses. By 1892 Boussad, Valadon et Cie., Paris and New York; 1892 J. Randolph Coolidge, Boston (from Boussod); 1892 MFA (gift of Coolidge) (accession date: September 1, 1892. Leon Augustine Lhermitte French, 1844-1925 Friend of the Humble, Supper at Emmaus 1892, oil on canvas 155.5x222.9cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: gift of J. Randolph Coolidge 92, 2657. European paintings from online collections database Art of Europe. Sallman reportedly had a vision from which he painted this image of Christ but now it would appear that he copied directly from Leon Lhermitte’s painting 48 years earlier and it became the Protestants idol. The book Icons of American Protestantism by Morgan shows the two paintings to compare the head of "Jesus" with the full body painted by Leon Lhermitte in 1892 but never getting famous. The image that Sallman drew closely resembles the face of Christ in a painting of 1892, the Friend of the Humble, by Frenchman Leon Lhermitte 1844 - 1925, reproduced in the December 1922 issue of the Ladies Home Journal. In an article of 1961, Warner Sallman acknowledged that he had seen the Lhermitte reproduction, cut it out, and framed it as a gift for his mother. The resemblance is unmistakable and marks one of many instances in which Sallman borrowed an image and reworked it in a new context. His use of the French painting however, is reappropriation rather than plagiarism... Sallman thus transformed Lhermitte’s painting of Jesus by submitting it to the conventions of studio photography. To these he added the smooth complexion, the dark linear clarity of features, and a warm color of advertising imagery, like imagery he had created years earlier in advertisements for Chicago vendors and newspapers. The photography rhetoric of his image-which extended so far that people gave reproductions to the pocket-sized version of the head of Christ as gifts, recalling the practice of exchanging small photographic portraits for the wallet, album, desktop-accounts in part for its popularity, several people responded to a query of religious periodicals cited the portrait realism of the image as appealing, stating that they felt that it bore an exact likeness of Jesus. One person even called the image a true photo of Jesus". <umcom.org/transmitter/oct 2000> "This peaceful portrait may owe its phenomenal popularity to war," says veteran stage and screen actor Hal Holbrooke, who narrates this special, distributed during World War II in wallet size by the Salvation Army and YMCA to millions of American military personnel men and women, this image became a marketing miracle, also appealing on clocks and calendars, funeral home fans and Sunday school literature". Warner Sallman admits that Lhermitte’s painting may have influenced his. See <beliefnet.com/story/24/story_2472_1.html> the full body painting. Neither painting represents Christ. This is a substitute of Satan to derail the true faith. I proudly welcome my friend and great artist Norbert Kox here today coming for the reception next Saturday of my Revelation Now at the state museum. We will also work to complete the new painting entitled Gloria of the Lamb. We had a wonderful visit with Joe Adams at Lake Sheila after visiting the site of the bus I am painting with the apocalyptic message. May God bless our efforts to paint and portray the real true and living God.