Turin Shroud: Comprehensive Impossibility for a Work of Art (2025)

R.: “ Image Formation and the Shroud of Turin

1994

The following reprint of our published paper addresses the details of how we produced a faint life size negative image of a man with no lines or brush strokes which affects only the uppermost fibrils of the cloth's fibers. Our paper also proves that our images are encoded with a wealth of accurate three-dimensional spatial information. With this drawing technique, one can also incorporate images of wounds, as well as blood evidence into the illustration. We primarily discuss the technical aspects of image formation and analysis, and conclude that a 13th or 14th century artist could have created the image on the Turin cloth. On the surface, this seems like the most logical and easily justified conclusion, but since the drawing technique is timeless, such an image could actually have been created centuries earlier. With this in mind, I present the added hypothesis that the image could just as conceivably be a type of deathbed documentary diagram. This is my personal opinion, and ...

Image Formation and the Shroud of Turin

The Journal of Imaging Science and Technology, 1994

The Ramifications of the Image Superficiality on the Turin Shroud

2021

One of the most striking features on the Turin Shroud is the superficiality of the image, which was one of the things that most surprised the 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project “STURP,” a group of mainly American scientists and most of whom worked in the U.S.’ nuclear and space programs, were given permission to study the Shroud, believed by many to be the actual burial cloth of the historical Jesus of Nazareth, for five days around the clock. Their mission was to determine how the image got onto the cloth, no more, no less. They were unable to come up with an answer, and actually concluded the image was not the product of the artist. Some skeptics, especially those who were anti-religion, including Christianity, were not pleased with their findings, and STURP was subsequently often accused of being a group of religious zealots who were out to prove the Resurrection of Jesus. They were not. Although most were Christian, only a few could be considered devout; the team included Jews and agnostics as well. As men who built bombs and help send crafts into space, they were mainly interested in the Shroud from a purely scientific perspective. I have previously published a bibliography of all their papers and articles dedicated to the Shroud. I have also previously published two other bibliographies: 1) on the superficiality, as well three-dimensionality and photo-negativity and 2) on the feasibility of an artist being able to reproduce the Shroud image. The latter one included a source by the late Fr. Charles Foley’s 1981 presentation in Bologna, Italy, in which he listed the following elements as to why he believed the Shroud was not able to be faked: - The frontal aspect lay unevenly over the Body, yet the imprint of the Body is perfectly proportioned. - The Body imprints are in reversed light and shade, the Blood imprints are not. Both are on the same surface. They differ in tint. - Neither overlaps the other. - Only the weft threads carry the colouration, the warp threads do not. - There is no liquid migration of either the Body or the Blood imprints; it follows that no liquid (of either medium or blood) is the cause. - There is no absorption into the body of the threads. - The imprints exist solely in the tips of the filaments, that means there must be either an atomic or molecular change. - The colouration exists only on the thread surface which faces the Body. - What is shown is Blood already dry on the skin, mirrored on the linen. - The double life sized figures are anatomically perfect, and of the same Body. - The Shroud is an orthogonal projection, which has three dimensional qualities encoded in both figures, and is beyond man's skill. - The medical evidence of absolute flawlessness in all the complicated details of wounds, lacerations and lesions, each of which has acted in characteristic fashion. - The forensic evidence of the post mortem conditions ... namely that there is no evidence of corruption, decomposition or flattening out by gravity. Everything has come to an abrupt stop. The Body can only have been present for thirty hours. - The presence of the aloes, myrrh and Teichmann's crystals. - The U.V. and I.R. fluorescence results. - The independent and recently discovered interlocking of the evidence from the Shroud and the Gospels. - The evidence of the pollen from Soccotra and the Dead Sea. - The evidence from the V. P. 8 analyser and the Scanning Electron Microscope. - The densitometer-computer “read-out" of the clots of blood The point of this short article is to emphasize how difficult it would have been for a medieval artist to produce the image on the Shroud. Epistemologically, that it isn’t enough to conclude from that a supernatural cause for the image. Dr. Cheryl White, a professor of history at LSU, wrote to me in an email on July 19, 2021, “From an epistemological view, the doubt that a medieval artist could have produced it does not exclude the possibility that there is something we do not yet ‘know’ about the image formation process. I can’t separate the two - history and image formation […]. There is no known medieval (or modern!!) process to account for all of the unique image characteristics, and I think that’s the best we can say now?” Although many skeptics have claimed they have duplicated the Shroud image, in reality, they all fall short of matching all of the Shroud’s features. Although the situation can obviously change, it would seem that following the principle known as Occam’s Razor (that the simplest explanation — that is, the solution that requires the fewest assumptions — is preferable), along with overall difficulties of reproducing all of the cloth’s characteristics -- the simplest explanation is that the image was somehow connected to the special powers that Jesus was described in the Bible as having. This article will be updated as needed.

The Shroud of Turin between history and science: an ongoing debate

2011

The Shroud of Turin has passed through centuries of history, has travelled and has experienced events, which have only partially been recorded in documentary sources. Popular-cultural tradition has now accepted it as being the Shroud of the historical Christ. Nevertheless, public opinion has always been divided between those who believe in its authenticity and those who do not. Since the seventies there have been various wide-ranging study campaigns devoted to unravelling the mystery. Today the Shroud has become once more the centre of attention for the scientific world on the occasion of its last exposition. This paper aims to present a chronology of the investigative phases conducted so far and to put forward a new proposal in the field of image analysis and artistic diagnosis.

Evidences for testing hypotheses about the body image formation of the Turin Shroud

2005

This paper has been written in honour of the lamented Raymond Rogers who first proposed this work and dedicated many hours of his life to improve this collection of information; he wrote:

Correlation of image intensity on the Turin Shroud with the 3-D structure of a human body shape

Applied Optics, 1984

The frontal image on the Shroud of Turin is shown to be consistent with a body shape covered with a naturally draping cloth in the sense that image shading can be derived from a single global mapping function of distance between these two surfaces. The visible image on the Shroud does not appear to be the work of an artist in an eye/brain/hand coordination sense nor does it appear to be the result of direct contact only, diffusion, radiation from a body shape or engraving, dabbing powder on a bas-relief, or electrostatic imaging. The visible image on the Shroud is probably not the result of a hot bas-relief impressed into cloth, but such a mechanism seems capable of accounting for the Shroud image's distance correlation, resolution, and similar chemical structure. It does not simultaneously account for (1) the 3-D image residing on one side of the Shroud, (2) observed lateral image distortions (consistent with a draping cloth over a body shape), or. (3) expected thermal perturbations associated with physically thick superimposed blood images. A complex mechanism involving more than one process may account for some of the Shroud image's characteristics, but potential inconsistencies in shading continuity, cloth contact, lateral distortions, and pressure independence may exist.

Image Formation Hypotheses Pertaining to the Shroud of Turin -- an English-Language Bibliography

2022

*a match between the man's wounds in the Shroud and Jesus. Some researchers believe there could be a connection between the Shroud images and what the Gospels call the "Resurrection." *an assumption that the cloth did wrap Jesus and since Jesus was presumed to have been dead and the Gospels recount strange properties of Jesus' body in his post-Resurrection appearances, some researchers believe that a radiation of some kind reanimated his corpse and caused the Shroud images. This article will list citations in separate sections for papers/articles: *1) that propose one or more radiations as a cause for the images *2) that deny that radiation could be the cause *3) that entail miscellaneous pro-authenticity hypotheses that don't involve radiation *4) anti-authenticity hypotheses Note: some of the entries in section 2 may advocate one type of radiation and deny others. Section 3 could have some material about radiation. Many of the sources are accessible online. The article will be updated as needed.

A Physical Hypothesis on the Origin of the Body Image Embedded into the Turin Shroud

2000

The faint body image embedded into the Turin Shroud has not yet explained by science. We present experimental results of excimer laser irradiation (wavelengths 308 nm and 193 nm) of a raw linen fabric and of a linen cloth, seeking for a possible mechanism of image formation. We achieved a permanent coloration of both linens as a threshold effect of

Is The Shroud of Turin a Medieval Photograph ? A Critical Examination of the Theory

2001

Since the late 1970's, dozens of researchers, scholars, skeptics and "professional debunkers" have presented their theories on how the image on the Shroud of Turin was formed. Some are based on serious science while others show a complete lack of understanding of the Shroud image or its properties. In this paper, I will review the "proto-photography" theory proposed by Prof. Nicholas Allen of South Africa. This theory concludes that the raw materials to produce photography not only existed in medieval times, but that a brilliant medieval "photographer" actually used them to invent photography 500 years before the documented creation of the first photographic negative by Joseph Niepce in 1818. To his credit, Allen has actually achieved what he set out to accomplish. He has, without question, used medieval raw materials to create a faint but good quality photographic image on linen cloth. As I will show however, his own results provide the best eviden...

The Shroud of Turin and its Ancient Copies

There are copies of the Shroud of Turin, which could be described as "Holy Shroud" actually made by man's hand. We can share our experience in the analysis of some of them. By using the results from these examples and comparing them with the results of the analysis of the Shroud of Turin itself, we can assess the actual possibility that the true Shroud was made by an artist. The negativity, the absence of contour, the absence of the figure at the hidden side and the transparency of the Shroud image differ considerably from their copies. Moreover, the laboratory analyses confirm the presence of pigments based on heavy elements. In our opinion, the original Shroud of Turin can not be the work of a painter.