Is the white image of Christ just Cesare Borgia?

No, the white image of Christ predates Cesare Borgia.

No. The traditional image of Jesus goes way back to long before Cesare Borgia. Here is a mural painting of Jesus from the Catacomb of Commodilla, dating to the late fourth century AD:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depiction_of_Jesus#/media/File:Christ_with_beard.jpg

This very strange idea seems to have originally come from a claim by Alexandre Dumas, but has been picked up and spread by Afrocentrics, with the argument being that originally Jesus was depicted as non-European because he was Jewish (somehow Afrocentrics equate ancient Semitic people with “African” and therefore “black”), so Pope Alexander VI commissioned new paintings of Jesus using his illegitimate son Cesare Borgia as their model. He then allegedly “ordered the destruction of all art depicting a Semitic Jesus”, so we have a white Jesus as our popular image of Jesus today. This claim is often made online (see The Holy Prepuce for one example) and is usually accompanied by these two images as “proof”:

https://i0.wp.com/gonzotoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/tumblr_lyiztg63km1qisa2ko1_540.jpg

It has also been propagated by Wu-Tang Clan affiliate, Killah Priest in "B.I.B.L.E.”, which includes the lyrics:

“I even learnt Caucasians were really the Tribe of Edam

The white image of Christ is really Cesare Borgia

And uhh, the second son of Pope Alexander

The Sixth of Rome, and once the picture was shown

That's how the devils tricked my dome.”

This whole 'theory' is complete nonsense.

Even looking at the two images above shows that this idea doesn’t make sense. Cesare Borgia had straight dark hair and dark brown eyes whereas the “popular image of Jesus” in western cultures tends to have wavy chestnut hair and light brown or blue eyes.

More importantly, the claim that before Pope Alexander VI (who was pope from 1492–1503) depictions of Jesus were “Semitic” and after him they were based on his son Cesare is simply wrong. Here are some examples of depictions of Jesus from before 1492:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Giovanni_Bellini_-_Head_of_the_Redeemer_-_WGA1747.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Hans_Memling_%28school%29_-_Head_of_Christ.JPG

https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-14ff98de446639c2fec3de1c90dea232.webp

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1e/Bramantino%2C_cristo_dolente.jpg/317px-Bramantino%2C_cristo_dolente.jpg

Note that all of them conform to the “popular depiction of Jesus” conventions - shoulder length wavy chestnut hair and light brown, hazel or blue eyes. All of these paintings are from before Pope Alexander’s supposed replacement of images of a “Semitic” Jesus with that of his son Cesare and yet they all conform to the way Jesus was depicted later.

This is how Jesus had been depicted in the west for centuries. Here is a fourteenth century image of Jesus:

https://www.wga.hu/art/m/memmi/various/polypty4.jpg

And here is a thirteenth century image of Jesus:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/bc/a1/c7/bca1c7dfcdaf60bf3ae656dbf2203211.jpg

And here is a twelfth century image of Jesus:

https://i.pinimg.com/236x/84/85/39/8485399c140e0f57169d22cfbe177a57.jpg

The artistic styles change over the centuries, moving from highly symbolic and stylistic to much more realistic as we get into the later fifteenth century. But the general iconography stays the same - light brown curly hair (not straight and dark like Cesare) and, when the eye colour is discernible at all, light brown or blue eyes (not dark brown like Cesare).

This is because western art’s depictions of Jesus were established in the early Middle Ages, not in the reign of Pope Alexander VI. And those early medieval depictions of Jesus were influenced by Eastern Roman religious art that depicted Jesus like this:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/85/32/92/85329242a9795749e64109795be962e2.jpg

Earlier Roman depictions of Jesus had followed the conventions of the time and so tended to show him clean-shaven with short hair, but by the sixth century he began to be shown with longer hair and a beard - probably because that was conventional for philosophers and teachers in that period. This is the image of “Jesus” that became predominant and remains so today, even though Jews in Jesus’ day actually wore their hair short.

So the claim that our common image of Jesus is based on that of a Borgia Pope’s illegitimate son is a silly conspiracy theory with no basis in fact. This image goes back at least 1000 years before either Alexander VI or Cesare Borgia were even born. The theory is garbage.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/jesus-modeled-on-borgia/

Possibly, but it doesn't really matter if it is. It's a portrayal, nothing more, and very few people think that Jesus actually looked like that.

Cesare Borgia is in no way, shape, or form any part of that portrait. It's a shame that over 500 years after this man, his sister Lucretzia and father Rodrigo Pope Alexander VI still have most people thinking of all the propaganda from the 15th and 16th century is actually truth.

It is possible. The church has imported so many things from the world so why not.