The Shroud of Turin

The Shroud of Turin is a 14 1/2 foot long, 3 1/2 foot wide cloth that is kept in St. John's Cathedral in the town of Turin, Italy. On the cloth, there is the front and back image of a man in a faint straw yellow colour. For the 1973 revealing of the shroud, a team of 43 American scientists was allowed to conduct 120 hours of tests to determine exactly what was on the shroud and possibly how it got there.

The "Report on the Shroud of Turin" was written by Dr. John Heller and published in 1983. It follows the formulation of the American scientific team, the study of the shroud in Turin, and the subsequent analysis of the results back in the United States. I have a lengthy summary (4 pgs) but for the purposes of this blog I will severely cut.

A VP©8 Image Analyzer was used to view the shroud. This "camera" interprets darker as farther away and lighter as closer up. A typical picture will become badly distorted under this image analyzer because the light source and the surfaces upon which it's reflecting will be interpreted as being closer when in fact this is not the case. The image on the shroud shows up as a perfect 3D image, which is virtually impossible to paint. (pg. 38)

Reflectance Spectroscopy was used which obtains spectra based on reflectance. They began on a background area of the cloth, then switched over to a section that had an image on it. They began at the heel and moved up the leg. As they moved up the leg they got totally different spectra, which indicates it's made of dissimilar material. It had all been alike except the heel. Under full magnification of a macroscope they found dirt particles "deep into and between the threads." This is logical if it came from a man's feet. It is illogical if it where painted since it could not have been seen. (pg. 112)

The body images are straw yellow in colour, "only on the crowns of microfibers of the thread." There were no signs of capillary action. The absence of this suggests that no fluid was used in the creation of the image. If paint had been used then the fibers should have adhered to one another and matted together. (pg 113)

Whenever there was a bloodstain in the image area there was matting and capilliarity. This would have to be the case with actual blood, which is a mixture of water, cells and blood protein. (pg 113)

There was no meniscus effect where the images were found. On the other hand, in the areas where the blood was purported to be, it left a meniscus as a fluid would. This is evidence that paint was not used to create the man image and what was thought to be blood was behaving as it should. (pg. 113)

Xray flourescence identifies dozens of inorganic pigments which would have been made up of such elements as arsenic, cobalt and mercury available in the middle ages. The results on the shoud were the occurrence of Calcium, lots of it, spread evenly over the length and width of the shroud, Strontium in lesser amounts, but again evenly distributed over the shroud, Iron spread uniformly over the shroud, except in the bloodstained areas where it was significantly higher. No other elements were found. Thermal analysis seemed to preclude organic and biological substance. Thus leaving no explanation for the image's manner of creation. (pg. 135)

After lengthy investigation is was discovered that the process of retting linen is by soaking the flax plant in a natural body of water (lake/river) Parts of the flax rot away and remaining fibres are linen which is spun into thread. During the process, the linen fibres act as an icon exchanger, picking up ions of Calcium, Strontium, and Iron. This discovery explains the findings of the Xray Flourescence tests and evidences the shroud was made by methods natural to an ancient time period. (pg. 174)

The "images were directionless" and therefore could not have been painted by human hand. This was the finding from a detailed image analysis at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. (pg. 137)

After one month of testing, pretty well all paints, pigments, dyes or stains were eliminated as possible means of getting the image on the shroud. No acids, solvent, or other chemicals extracted or changed the colour. They left no reasonable explanation as to how the image came to be on the cloth. (Pg. 198-206)

"We do know, however, that there are thousands on thousands of pieces of funeral linen going back to millenia before Christ, and another huge number of linens of Coptic Christian burials. On none of these is there any image of any kind. A few have some blood and stains on them, but no image." (pg. 220)

A volunteer was chosen that had the same build and height as the image on the shroud. He was laid on a glass surface and the team crawled underneath to take measurements and take pictures. The contact points between the body and the glass surface are a replication of the contact points that would have left the image on the shroud. Over the shoulder blades there were two bilateral, trapezoidal flat areas which were the same as those on the back and the flattening of the buttocks, thighs and calves matching the shroud image. (pg. 208)

The hands on the shroud have only 4 digits showing. The thumbs were missing. It was found that when a spike is driven through the wrist, damage will occur the ulnar nerve which in turn would cause the thumb to flex into the palm of the hand. Following death, rigor mortis would keep it that way. This is unlikely to be an artists perspective when undertaking a painting.

Only one wrist shows up on the image. When the volunteer crossed his wrists and folded his thumb into his palm, the cloth tented up to a distance of approximately 2 inches above the lower wrist. Based on the VP©8 3D results, the intensity of the image is in relation to the distance that existed between the body and the cloth. This 2 inch distance prevented the lower wrist from leaving an image. An artist painting this image would be able to see the wrist and there would be no reason to not paint it.