First published elsewhere Monday, January 7, 2008


Thoughts on the Shroud of Turin
I haven't read The Da Vinci Code but...

. . . I
have scanned a book by the painter David Hockney, whose internet-driven survey
of Renaissance and post-Renaissance art makes a strong case for a trade secret:
use of a camera obscura technique for creating precision realism in
paintings.

Hockney's book, Secret Knowledge: rediscovering the lost
legacy of the old masters, 2001, uses numerous paintings to show that
European art guilds possessed this technical ability, which was a closely
guarded and prized secret. Eventually the technique, along with the related
magic lantern projector, evolved into photography. It's possible the technique
also included the use of lenses and mirrors, a topic familiar to Leonardo da
Vinci.

Apparently the first European mention of a camera obscura is in
Codex Atlanticus.

I didn't know about this when first mulling over
the Shroud of Turin controversy and so was quite perplexed as to how such an
image could have been formed in the 14th century, when the shroud's existence
was first reported. I was mistrustful of the carbon dating, realizing that the
Kremlin had a strong motive for deploying its agents to discredit the purported
relic. (See my old page Science, superstition and the Shroud of Turin
http://www.angelfire.com/az3/nuzone/shroud.html)

But Hockney's book helps
to bolster a theory by fellow Brits Lynn Picknell and Clive Prince that the
shroud was faked by none other than Leonardo, a scientist, "magician" and
intriguer. Their book The Turin Shroud was a major source of inspiration
for The Da Vinci Code, it has been reported. The two are not
professional scientists but, in the time-honored tradition of English amateurs,
did an interesting sleuthing job. As they point out, the frontal head
image is way out of proportion with the image of the scourged and crucified
body.

They suggest the face is quite reminiscent of a self-portrait by Leonardo.
Yet, two Catholic scientists at the Jet Propulsion Lab who used a computer
method in the 1980s to analyze the image had supposedly demonstrated that it was
"three-dimensional." But a much more recent analysis, commissioned by Picknell
and Prince, found that the "three-dimensionalism" did not hold up. From what I
can tell, the Jet Propulsion pair proved that the image was not made by
conventional brushwork but that further analysis indicates some type of
projection.

Picknell and Prince suggest that Leonardo used projected
images of a face and of a body -- perhaps a cadaver that had been inflicted with
various crucifixion wounds -- to create a death mask type of impression. But the
image collation was imperfect, leaving the head size wrong and the body that of,
by Mideast standards, a giant. This is interesting, in that Hockney discovered
that the camera obscura art often failed at proportion and depth of field
between spliced images, just as when a collage piece is pasted onto a
background.Still the shroud's official history begins in 1358, about a
hundred years prior to the presumed Da Vinci hoax.

It seems plausible that
either some shroud-like relic had passed to a powerful family and that its
condition was poor, either because of its age or because it wasn't that
convincing upon close inspection. The family then secretly enlisted Leonardo,
the theory goes, in order to obtain a really top-notch relic. Remember, relics
were big business in those days, being used to generate revenues and political
leverage.For if Leonardo was the forger, we must account for the fact
that the highly distinctive "Vignon marks" on the shroud face have been found in
Byzantine art dating to the 7th century.

I can't help but wonder whether
Leonardo only had the Mandylion (the face) to work with, and added the body as a
bonus (I've tried scanning the internet for reports of exact descriptions of the
shroud prior to da Vinci's time but haven't succeeded). The Mandylion
refers to an image not made by hands. This "image of Edessa" must have been very
impressive, considering the esteem in which it was held by Byzantium. Byzantium
also was rife with relics and with secret arts -- which included what we'd call
technology along with mumbo-jumbo.

The Byzantine tradition of iconography may
have stemmed from display of the Mandylion.Ian Wilson, a credentialed
historian who seems to favor shroud authenticity, made a good case for the
Mandylion having been passed to the Knights Templar -- perhaps when the
crusaders sacked Constantinople in 1204. The shroud then showed up in the hands
of a descendant of one of the Templars after the order was ruthlessly
suppressed. His idea was that the shroud and the Mandylion were the same, but
that in the earlier centuries it had been kept folded in four, like a map, with
the head on top and had always been displayed that way.

The other
possibility is that a convincing relic of only the head was held by the
Templars. A discovery at Templecombe, England, in 1951 showed that regional
Templar centers kept paintings of a bearded Jesus face, which may well have been
copies of a relic that Templar enemies tried to find but couldn't. The Templars
had been accused of worshiping a bearded idol.Well, what made the
Mandylion so convincing?

A possibility: when the Templars obtained the relic
they also obtained a secret book of magical arts that told how to form such an
image. This of course implies that Leonardo discovered the technique when
examining this manuscript, which may have contained diagrams. Or, it implies
that the image was not counterfeited by Leonardo but was a much, much older
counterfeit.Obviously all this is pure speculation. But one cannot deny
that the shroud images have a photographic quality but are out of kilter with
each other and that the secret of camera obscura projection in Western art seems
to stem from Leonardo's studios.

The other point is that the 1988 carbon
analysis dated the shroud to the century before Leonardo. If one discounts
possible political control of the result, then one is left to wonder how such a
relic could have been so skillfully wrought in that era. Leonardo was one of
those once-in-a-thousand-year geniuses who had the requisite combination of
skills, talents, knowledge and impiety to pull off such a stunt.Of
course, the radiocarbon dating might easily have been off by a hundred years
(but, if fairly done, is not likely to have been off by 1300 years).

All
in all, I can't be sure exactly what happened, but I am strongly inclined to
agree that the shroud was counterfeited by Leonardo based on a previous relic.
The previous relic must have been at least "pretty good" or why all the fuss in
previous centuries? But, it is hard not to suspect Leonardo's masterful hand in
the Shroud of Turin.Of course, the thing about the shroud is that there
is always more to it. More mystery. I know perfectly well that, no matter how
good the scientific and historical analysis, trying to nail down a proof one way
or the other is a wil o' the wisp.