Whence Came the Shroud? An Argument for an Engraving on Wood Printed on Cloth
There is no evidence for the existence of the Shroud of Turin before the late-14th century. Everything offered as an explanation of its whereabouts are only speculations. What we do have instead is very well attested documentation of the Shroud from 1389 onwards. We even have a confession from the purported artist who created the cloth peddled before pilgrims and believers as the true burial shroud of Christ and and where and how it came to be exhibited, thanks to a memo from the bishop of Troyes to Avignon pope Clement VII:
“…a short while ago in the diocese of Troyes, the dean of a certain collegiate church, specifically in Lirey, deceitfully and wickedly, inflamed with the fire of avarice and cupidity, not from devotion but for gain, arranged to have in his church a certain cloth, cunningly portrayed, on which was portrayed in a subtle manner the double image of a single man, that is to say his front and back; [the dean] falsely asserted and pretended that this was the very shroud in which our Savior Jesus Christ was enrobed in the sepulchre, and on which shroud there had remained the impression of the whole likeness of the Savior himself with the wounds that he bore…
“[Bishop Henry de Poitiers] at last discovered the deception, and how [the image on] that cloth had been artificially portrayed. It was even proved by the artist who had portrayed it that it was made by work of a man, not miraculously wrought or bestowed.”
But if the creation of the image on the Shroud stumps scholars and scientific experts who study it, concluding that only some kind of divine energy — the Resurrection of Jesus — could have made such a unique image on the linen, how was it made? And, is it really such a mystery?
Shortly after the publication of Secondo Pia’s photographic negative of the Shroud in 1898, two camps formed from those invested in the Turin Shroud. On the one hand, there was the hypothesis of Paul Vignon: he and his colleagues believed the stained imprint of the man on the Shroud was created not simply by contact, but from a vapograph process. Vignon borrowed a phrase from physics to clarify this thought — “action at a distance,” meaning, according to Vignon, that between the sweat and burial spices, the image of Jesus “diffused” onto the cloth over a period of time.
On the other hand, medieval-researcher priest Ulysse Chevalier produced the most extensive historical path of the Shroud to date, relying on the extant documents, and concluded it was of medieval origin. Fernand de Mely, archaeologist and medieval art critic, surmised the Shroud was not miraculously produced, but was the product of an engraving on wood printed on cloth.
de Mely suggested this in 1902. Decades later, when the American research team sponsored by the Holy Shroud Guild, dubbed the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STuRP), descended upon Turin in 1978 Joseph S. Accetta was among the team.
Accetta, who has a Ph.D in electrical engineering (optics) from the University of Mexico, suspected, as Mely did much earlier, the use of printmaking and blockprinting, also known as woodcutting, in the creation of the image on the cloth.
First, as an overview, one cannot separate the Passion of Christ with the makeup of the Shroud. It is a visual testament of the Crucifixion, a visual Gospel. Most notably, the blotch indicative of the centurion’s lance wound (cf. Jn. 19:34). The blood marks around the forehead indicative of the Crown of Thorns (cf. Jn. 19:2, Mt. 27:29, Mk. 15:17, Jn. 19:5). The splashing blood wound at the wrist/hand and evidence of whippings. All of this plus seemingly unexplainable phenomena unique to the Shroud: three-dimensional imaging; lack of brush strokes or pigments; negative image; a superficial image only on the surface of the linen.
Put together, as well as the purported lack of other Shroud-like images that we know of, has influenced Shroud supporters to advocate the Turin Shroud as a relic of Jesus.
But Accetta suggested what we know as the Shroud of Turin today is “remnants of a 14th century blockprint (woodcut etc.) printed with iron gall ink.” His research can be found here: https://www.academia.edu/123822521/Probable_Origins_of_a_14_th_Century_Turin_Shroud_Image.
Accetta’s thesis regarding blockprinting as the most likely means of creating a 14th century Shroud is based upon a confluence of a number of historical, geographical and observational factors. Blockprinting is a technique involving an inked shallow carving pressed on a textile or other material and is still practiced today. Superb examples of this process during the medieval period exist.
Accetta notes Flanders and the general Champagne region was a major textile trading center, with the annual trade fair a major source of revenue and exchange of textiles. Accetta argues that the image we see today was not exactly what medieval viewers saw, particularly in its ostensions both in Lirey, Doubs, and later under Savoy ownership. This argument is complemented by various artworks depicting Shroud exhibitions.
Accetta makes this point about dyeing linen:
Due to the structural binding of the cellulose fibers in linen, the pigments will only adhere to the surface of the fibers. While linen will dye just as vibrant and deeply as other fibers, it will not retain its color as long. Exposure to air, light and chemicals speed the deterioration process.
The colorant is transferred in accordance with local relief and pressure of the printing block, Accetta says. In private correspondence with me, Accetta wrote, “The sepia toned fibrils constituting the image are the result of corrosion or oxidation possibly by heat or acid as determined by LANL chemist Ray Rogers, also a member of the STuRP team.” Accetta contends that because linen is difficult to dye and retain the colorant long term, the original image was probably much more vivid. Over time the ink flaked off during the centuries of folding/ unfolding and washing leaving the underlying corrosion.
Accetta further notes that the relief printing process “transfers coloring matter in proportional to its local curvature and pressure,” which would help explain the image’s three-dimensional quality. This is a major point on which Shroud authenticity hinges: how can the image have 3-D properties? Accetta breaks it down further:
Image transfer from an object onto some recording medium can only occur by 3 processes; emitted radiation from the object, reflected radiation by the object and direct contact. Since there does not appear to be a radiative process vis-a-vis a lens, human eye or pinhole camera or other device with spatially invariant response that would give rise to the observed 3-d effect, we must specifically look to a direct contact process that renders an image density at least modestly proportional to the object feature depth. For several reasons, high fidelity image transfer in the case of a cloth wrapping a human body would not be possible since the distortion evident upon unfolding would be significant and a good deal of smearing due to front-to-back weight asymmetries would be evident. Further, the image density would be expected to be highly non-uniform which would not render the observed a 3-d effect.
Accetta concludes woodprinting is the most likely means for which the Shroud image was imprinted on the cloth. Woodcuts have long been a popular means of artistic expression, but apart from Accetta it has been little addressed in Shroud scholarship. “[P]rinting from wood blocks on textiles was known from the 14th century, but it had little development until paper began to be manufactured in France and Germany at the end of the 14th century,” he argues in his paper. Woodprinting was the common means for large-scale tapestries, with several woodblocks used to form the whole image. It follows, according to Accetta, multiple woodblocks were employed in the creation of the Shroud image, corresponding with the seemingly detached head image from the rest of the body. With this contact process — a full frontal shadow relief expertly carved in wood or other material — a number of hitherto unexplained phenomena become clear: 3-D effect, reversed contrast, details on the frontal and dorsal image. Finally, the hematite found in the “blood stains” of the Shroud, with its high iron content, suggests iron gall ink.
“Iron gall ink is long term corrosive and document preservationists spend considerable effort trying to rescue historical documents from Its effects. Further, a pervasive iron background was found by the STuRP x-ray\spectroscopy team lending more credence to this thesis. Thus, what is being observed is the remnant of the original image. Large printing blocks from the medieval period exist demonstrating that a sizeable full body print is feasible. During the medieval period a thriving textile manufacturing and printing industry was located just to the north in Flanders which could have provided both the linen and the artistic techniques to carve and print the image. In any case this region of France was a major trading center and could have provided the means for import of the linen from elsewhere and drawn by the demand for luxury goods from the survivors of the black death.”
In his 1883 book, A History of Wood-Engraving, Woodberry describes how early fourteenth century prints were obtained from woodcuts depicting scenes from Scripture or lives of the saints:
“These pictures were on single leaves of paper; the outlines were printed from engraved woodblocks, but occasionally, it is believed, from metal plates cut in relief; they were taken off in a pale, brownish ink by rubbing on the back of the paper with a burnisher, and sometimes in black ink and with a press; they were then colored, either by hand or by means of a stencil plate, in order to make them more attractive to the people.”
A contemporary artist from Italy, Davide Schileo, is a printmaker invested in the medieval and Renaissance production process of intaglio printmaking. His method is perhaps not too dissimilar to how the artist of the Shroud produced the cloth:
Woodberry nicely summarizes what the visual image — like gazing upon the sweat-stained burial sheet of the Messiah — meant to the medieval mind:
“[L]ike children, they apprehended through pictures, they thought upon all higher themes in pictures rather than in words; their ideas were pictorial rather than verbal; painting was in spiritual matters more truly a language to them than their own palois. They could not reason, they could not easily understand intellectual statement, they could not imagine vividly, they could only see.”