The Turin Shroud: The Image of Edessa created in c. 300-400 AD?
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Slowvehicle
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Well I'm not particularly, but others here certainly will be. Methinks you may have got too close to this subject for too long, and can't actually see the wood for the trees, so to speak. If you cover a human with anything and spread a sheet over them, the ensuing marks on the sheet will not have a mis-sized head, elongated limbs, and banana fingers seen in the image on the shroud.
I accept that you know far more about the chemistry of the shroud than I do. Could you tell us what it is about that chemistry which demonstrates that the images could only have been formed using the flour and oil method you describe? If it isn't the chemistry, what other science might exclude all other explanations? If you can't button it down to a certainty, maybe you might have been a little quick to dismiss my second point.
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
(or possibly the right thread)
meccanoman
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Here's a brief reply to the first part of your question, MIkeG. (I may address the other parts later when I've some more time).
There are two possible answers to the 'overlong arms'.
The first, arguably the more likely, was that hands would need to be crossed over groin for public exhibition of an imprint from a clearly naked man. It was then quickly established that the normal anatomy does not permit that if the subject is recumbent with head resting on the floor. But it does become possible merely by lifting the head a few inches off said floor. So maybe those arms only appear too long because one is subconsciously making the assumption that the subject's head was in contact with the floor when it was not. So the head was probably propped up with a cushion or two for the frontal imprint, while - as suggested previously - a second subject of approx the same build was recruited for the dorsal image on the other half of the linen.
In fact there are advantages to be gained from that raised frontal-image head, at least if imprinting the real head, because it narrows the gap between chin and chest, neatly avoiding problems to do with tricky imaging of the neck without underside of chin. (The option of substituting a bas relief for the real head has already been noted, such that torso and limbs only are imprinted off the raised-head subject).
Alternative explanation? The modellers intended the arms to look too long, whether by the means above - raising of the head - or by finding someone blessed or cursed with exceptionally long arms. Why would they have wanted to do that? Answer: go figure (the clue being death by crucifixion, which involves arms being required to support at least part of the body weight for several hours). What's needed here is a stretch of the imagination, or, better still, an imagination of the stretch.
Those seemingly overlong arms could have provided a useful talking point before finally imploring pilgrims to donate generously to the offertory box on their way out of the viewing area.
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David Mo
Philosopher
Very interesting your “washed” hand.
I think that some alternative hypotheses are possible but they have to explain some features of the body image that are not “natural”. For example:
(1) The fingers are abnormally elongated. The forefinger is longer than the ring finger of the lower hand. This is a classical feature of the late gothic and first Renaisance (Cuatrocento). See this: https://i1.wp.com/upload.wikimedia....d/Duccio_The-Madonna-and-Child-128.jpg?zoom=2
(2) The position of the hands over the pubis is impossible with the angles of the elbows. This elongation of the arms is characteristic of some painters as Boticelli: See his The birth of Venus: http://www.artchive.com/artchive/b/botticelli/venus.jpg
(3) The blood rivulets are naturally impossible whether the person is up or lying. See Garlaschelli demonstration: http://www.aafs.org/sites/default/files/AAFS2014Proceedings.pdf and here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNzVc1MqJ2s . The blood stains of the back of the head are specially impossible : https://shroudofturinwithoutalltheh...-dorsal-blood-on-hair-cropped.png?w=768&h=411
.
All these unnatural features are visible with naked eye and show that some pictorial retouches are necessary to explain these physical impossibilities.
However, something can be made to discover the real cause of the image only if the church allows that the cloth be examined by an interdisciplinary and independent scientific team. To leave the sindonoligsts be in charge of the investigation is not useless, is harmful. They have no experience of the sophisticated methods of the scientific study of works of art and they are obsessed to demonstrate the authenticity of the Shroud. This is a dangerous mixture.
In addition, the Catholic Church has a big business with the Shroud in Turin. The radiocarbon dating threatened the benefits both spiritual and material and I doubt very much that they risk again.
hugh farey
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Greetings, all; it's been a while since I looked in, and I must say I'm glad you're now thinking about how the image on the Shroud might have been made, which is linked to my own particular interest, which is why it was made at all.
Rakovsky: It was a bit rash of you to begin with "I believe" before asking for sources for your belief; that's not really how they see things around here. However, your enquiry has relevance. Even if the Shroud is Medieval, it is worth asking what its antecedents were. There certainly were "shrouds" in Constantinople, probably more than one, and also "acheiropoietic" images, including the Mandylion and probably a couple of Veronicas. The cult of relics seems to have emerged during the 5th century, and none of them have provenances from earlier - although some of the accounts of that time claim to record earlier histories. You also mention the Gospel of the Hebrews, but the linen cloth mentioned in it does not necessarily have anything to do with the burial of Jesus. It occurs in a tiny fragment in Jerome's works, which are also 5th century. Irenaeus, in the 2nd Century, deplores the custom of the Carpocrations to venerate images of Christ along with other philosophers, but there is no suggestion that these are relics.
Meccanoman: Good to see you entering the fray again!
David Mo: Good to see you too!
MikeG: I too have problems with using real people, and in fact I'm not keen on the bas relief either. My own experiments at the moment use a thick paste made of iron oxide powder and vinegar, which I am dabbing onto bits of cloth either with a home-made 'pounce', or just a brush. It is almost a 'dry brushing' technique. The idea is that the 'paint' only touches the very outsides of the threads, that the iron oxide easily comes off, but that the vinegar degrades the cloth sufficiently well to leave the "sweat-mark" discolouration that we see on the Shroud.
Rakovsky: It was a bit rash of you to begin with "I believe" before asking for sources for your belief; that's not really how they see things around here. However, your enquiry has relevance. Even if the Shroud is Medieval, it is worth asking what its antecedents were. There certainly were "shrouds" in Constantinople, probably more than one, and also "acheiropoietic" images, including the Mandylion and probably a couple of Veronicas. The cult of relics seems to have emerged during the 5th century, and none of them have provenances from earlier - although some of the accounts of that time claim to record earlier histories. You also mention the Gospel of the Hebrews, but the linen cloth mentioned in it does not necessarily have anything to do with the burial of Jesus. It occurs in a tiny fragment in Jerome's works, which are also 5th century. Irenaeus, in the 2nd Century, deplores the custom of the Carpocrations to venerate images of Christ along with other philosophers, but there is no suggestion that these are relics.
Meccanoman: Good to see you entering the fray again!
David Mo: Good to see you too!
MikeG: I too have problems with using real people, and in fact I'm not keen on the bas relief either. My own experiments at the moment use a thick paste made of iron oxide powder and vinegar, which I am dabbing onto bits of cloth either with a home-made 'pounce', or just a brush. It is almost a 'dry brushing' technique. The idea is that the 'paint' only touches the very outsides of the threads, that the iron oxide easily comes off, but that the vinegar degrades the cloth sufficiently well to leave the "sweat-mark" discolouration that we see on the Shroud.
meccanoman
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Hello again Hugh
Sorry, but I don't buy into your idea of acetic acid the generator of the body image's still unidentified chromophore? What's it supposed to be acting upon to generate a reflectance spectrum which STURP said was virtually indistinguishable from that of the 1532 scorch margins? (Thus my own focus btw on thermal mechanisms). Yes, I know that Heller and Adler and others speculated on the colour coming via acid-induced dehydration of carbohydrates, referring dubiously to cellulose as the susceptible target but their resort to concentrated sulphuric acid as a model reagent was unconvincing. I tested battery acid (34% H2SO4) letting it evaporate to higher concentrations, but never saw any yellowing or browning unless heat was also applied, and even then the coloration was slight.
The acetic acid of vinegar is not only very dilute (typically 5%) but it's also, needless to say, a much weaker acid in pH terms than sulphuric and other strong mineral acids. Had I obtained a worthwhile coloration with vinegar I'd have been more inclined to focus on the caramel colour used to give malt vinegar its brown colour, said in some references to be colloidal and thus less likely perhaps (?) to migrate away from superficial locations in the weave, optimistically reducing the risk (?) of 'non-permissible' reverse side coloration (the latter presently an occasional unwelcome appearance in my system which I'm still attempting to resolve).
But there's a more fundamental criticism that could be made of your current approach. You are ignoring the fact that the Shroud body image has the properties (primarily) of an image acquired by contact, not free-hand painting - whether wet, dry or somewhere in-between. Who bothers painting in the negative, to give reversed tones, consistent with an authentic life-size double body IMPRINT onto linen, when it's (surely?) so much simpler to put aside the brushes and take an IMPRINT allowing natural anatomical topography to yield the correct tonal balance of light and dark, almost as a good as a 19th/20th century silver-emulsion negative photograph?
Sorry, but I don't buy into your idea of acetic acid the generator of the body image's still unidentified chromophore? What's it supposed to be acting upon to generate a reflectance spectrum which STURP said was virtually indistinguishable from that of the 1532 scorch margins? (Thus my own focus btw on thermal mechanisms). Yes, I know that Heller and Adler and others speculated on the colour coming via acid-induced dehydration of carbohydrates, referring dubiously to cellulose as the susceptible target but their resort to concentrated sulphuric acid as a model reagent was unconvincing. I tested battery acid (34% H2SO4) letting it evaporate to higher concentrations, but never saw any yellowing or browning unless heat was also applied, and even then the coloration was slight.
The acetic acid of vinegar is not only very dilute (typically 5%) but it's also, needless to say, a much weaker acid in pH terms than sulphuric and other strong mineral acids. Had I obtained a worthwhile coloration with vinegar I'd have been more inclined to focus on the caramel colour used to give malt vinegar its brown colour, said in some references to be colloidal and thus less likely perhaps (?) to migrate away from superficial locations in the weave, optimistically reducing the risk (?) of 'non-permissible' reverse side coloration (the latter presently an occasional unwelcome appearance in my system which I'm still attempting to resolve).
But there's a more fundamental criticism that could be made of your current approach. You are ignoring the fact that the Shroud body image has the properties (primarily) of an image acquired by contact, not free-hand painting - whether wet, dry or somewhere in-between. Who bothers painting in the negative, to give reversed tones, consistent with an authentic life-size double body IMPRINT onto linen, when it's (surely?) so much simpler to put aside the brushes and take an IMPRINT allowing natural anatomical topography to yield the correct tonal balance of light and dark, almost as a good as a 19th/20th century silver-emulsion negative photograph?
Hokulele
Deleterious Slab of Damnation
Wait, are you using bleached flour?
meccanoman
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Yes, I am, and you are right to flag up differences between modern and medieval flour.
But the faint yellow colour of unbleached so-called 'white flour' is usually attributed to the presence of traces of flavins, but I frankly can't see them altering the Maillard browning reactions that take place in a hot oven - whether modern or medieval - due to chemical reaction at elevated temperature between reducing sugars and proteins.
The human eye is exceedingly sensitive to colour - yellow ones against a white background especially.
But one should not let that blind one to the kind of far more important chemical reactions that take place between those major (non-coloured) constituents of wheat flour - bleached or unbleached - when temperatures are reached that generate NEW yellow or brown colour - far more visible I might say than those traces of flavins in unbleached flour.
Having said that, control experiments are necessary I grant you, though some might consider that to be a dotting of i-s, crossing of t-s, i.e. character-forming counsel of perfection.
Personally, I try to achieve perfection in all my endeavours, but repeatedly find myself falling short. I blame my genes. Bring on post-partum gene editing I say! My dad never got things right where science was concerned...
Thank you for the observant comment.
Ignore this spontaneous, ill-considered response.
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Just a polite reminder that you haven't answered this point yet.
meccanoman
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It's not the task of science to come up with explanations that exclude all other ones, least of all future ones. One is usually content to account for all KNOWN data without presuming to exclude next year's or next century's data that are not yet in one's possession.
My Model 10 (flour imprinting) provides an explanation for the claimed microscopic properties of the Shroud body image (notably so-called half- tone effect, abrupt discontinuities of coloration along individual fibres). In fact it not only provides an explanation - it reproduces them experimentally under controlled, reproducible conditions! But it would be foolish to claim it's the only possible explanation. The onus is now on others to say why my model is wrong, and to come up with alternative explanations. Eighteen months have passed and I'm still waiting.
meccanoman
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Hello again David
Your comment re the flour-imprint of my hand from August last year prompted me to go looking for the unwashed fingers end. It didn't take long to find. This afternoon I divided it into two, and washed one part, leaving the other as unwashed control as before. Here's the result.
I omitted to mention that the "before" was NOT straight from the oven, as stated earlier. It was first soaked in warm water for 30 mins, which has an astonishing effect - it causes the image zone to plump up to make a semi-3D bas relief! There's a possible story there that can be fitted to the events of mid-1350's (when the first exhibitions at Lirey got the blessing of local Troyes bishop, Henri de Poitiers) but I'll spare you my speculations on that, and why Henri subsequently went ballistic with later showings). Are you thinking what I'm thinking (like display of wet bas relief initially, and later the faded washed-out image)?
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ferd burfle
Graduate Poster
Why do you say "unidentified"? Walter McCrone identified the chromophore particles taken from the STURP tape samples as red ochre and vermillion pigment, consistent with medieval artist's pigments. Based references you've made, I assume you're familiar with McCrone's analysis.
meccanoman
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Yup, indeed I am, as perforce must anyone who wishes to be taken seriously as a Shroud researcher. It would take too long to relate all the contrary evidence to McCrone's bizarre claims, though John Heller's book, relating his and Alan Adler's deep scepticism re the origin of traces of red ochre is a good start. (Reminder: the ochre - iron oxide- was too pure to have been derived from an artist's paint pigment and other origins were suggested, like having been adsorbed onto the linen from the natural waters in the flax-retting pond via ion exchange etc etc.) What amazes me is why Heller and Adler did not make more of their own finding that the image coloration is bleachable with diimide, NH=NH. That agent has a highly targeted hydrogenating action on -C=C- double bonds, converting them to -CH2-CH2- so could never have bleached anything that was an inorganic oxide, sulphide or other mineral substance. It's action is highly specific for organic compounds, specifically those whose chromophore is due to conjugated C=C double bonds, i.e. an alternation of double and single bonds, e.g. =CH-CH=CH-CH=CH- , maybe with some -N= linkages in the linear sequence as well. One probably needs to hydrogenate only a few of the -C=C- bonds in the sequence to destroy the highly-delocalised pi-bonded system, effectively decolorising the chromophore.
The trouble with McCrone is that he was - to put it baldly - a one-trick pony, relying almost entirely on what he could see down his microscope, which gave undue emphasis to traces of particulate material - hardly ideal when dealing with the origins of a diffuse yellow-brown coloration that is more akin to a stain than to an encrustation of artists' paint, ancient or otherwise.
My own view is that the colour is due to the limited seepage from roasting white flour in the region of 180 to 200 degrees C of a LIQUID exudate of Maillard reaction products, i.e. from interactions between reducing sugars and amino-groups. The liquid is able to migrate via the spaces between the linen fibres, i.e. via capillary action, with chemical condensation reactions taking place on the short journey to form high molecular weight enormously complex melanoidin pigments. The latter deposits as an exceedingly thin, superficial coating in an either/or fashion i.e. stained/not-stained, accounting for the peculiar 'half-tone' effect and 'discontinuities' discovered by Mark Evans and others in the course of the 78 STURP investigation. I have been able to witness and report those same two bizarre characteristics in my otherwise simple unsophisticated kitchen-based flour-imprinting technology.
David Mo
Philosopher
From my ignorance of the scientific theories of Adler and Heller, I don't attach too much importance of their claims because they didn't present them in an acceptable scientific form in some cases and they seem inconclusive in other. For example: they never quantified their conclusions about the "small" quantity of red particles in the image. McCrone did it. For example: they allegued (Adler) to have produced reddish colour by mixing bilirubin and blood but never presented his experiences. They claimed that there was not any image under the blood stains, but demanded more samples "to confirm" this point. Not very consistent.
I don't know the chemical "performances" of the Maillard reaction neither. But I am certain that the Shroud image was not formed by contact or emanation. The famous vaporografic hypothesis is impossible.
And, as I have said in a previous comment, I consider almost impossible that some features of the image have been produced without human intervention (a painter almost certainly).
meccanoman
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I concur with your view as regards 'emanation', David, regardless of what is allegedly emanating from a dead body - radiation or organic amines. But you have also dismissed a contact-imprinting mechanism as well, as earlier here has Hugh Farey. I'd be interested to hear yours and Hugh's reasons for what I consider an extraordinary position.
As for Adler and his bilirubin, that was almost pure fantasizing (but for weak uv fluorescence and a non-specific colorimetric spot test under the microscope), all the worse for being dressed up as science. The less said about that claim for "extraordinary amounts of bilirubin" the better.
But Adler being wrong about one or even several things does not necessarily equate to Adler being wrong about everything. One ought to give very serious consideration to the implications of the image pigment being decolorized by that diimide reagent. It's certainly been a major factor in the development of my own thinking - right or wrong- these last 5 years.
hugh farey
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I have experimented with varying concentrations of sulphuric acid, but find that the discolouration it produces is very grey, rather than the scorched appearance of the Shroud. I tried vinegar on a whim, and it does produce the correct colour, but only after heating. However I don't believe the image was painted in invisible ink, which is why I have combined it with iron oxide. As David Mo suggests, however, the amount of iron oxide, and in particular whether there is enough to produce an image, and how uniformly distributed it is across the cloth, is inadequately evidenced to be sure about. It is quite difficult to carry out experiments to place, say 1ug of powder evenly over 1cm2 of cloth, so as to observe the visibility of the outcome.
Sorry, I missed Meccanoman's last comment. I have spent some happy hours smearing my face with cocoa and pressing cloths to it, but have never achieved anything remotely satisfactory. There is not only the 'Agamemnon Mask' effect, but also the serious problem of creases and wrinkles, which invariably result in big triangles of non-contacted cloth. Hands, as we can see, are much flatter than faces, so these 'wrapping' distortions are minimised, but I cannot see that technique applying to whole bodies.
Sorry, I missed Meccanoman's last comment. I have spent some happy hours smearing my face with cocoa and pressing cloths to it, but have never achieved anything remotely satisfactory. There is not only the 'Agamemnon Mask' effect, but also the serious problem of creases and wrinkles, which invariably result in big triangles of non-contacted cloth. Hands, as we can see, are much flatter than faces, so these 'wrapping' distortions are minimised, but I cannot see that technique applying to whole bodies.
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meccanoman
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I agree wholeheartedly about the face, and share Luigi Garlaschelli's view that a separate bas relief was used (which accounts for the curious mask-like appearance with severe cut-offs at the cheek bones.
Hands - no problem, being flat. But don't be too quick to dismiss contact-imaging for the torso and limbs as well. They are also somewhat flat as regards highest relief, arguably more like hands than face.
Have you tried imprinting off one or more parts of the torso and limbs, Hugh? I'm presently experimenting with a large plastic toy - approx half human scale ! Initial results look highly promising: here you see the way that the flour-imprinting medium is only harvested off the higher relief to give a final imprint - not shown - that bears all the hallmarks of "made by contact", that same hallmark being seen in numerous places across the Shroud body image I might add.
PS: Have belatedly taken a photograph (from top of step ladder) of the unwetted, unwashed image from the above imprinting, alongside the full-length subject and a metre rule. Not wishing to flood this site with more photos than shown already, I'll hold it back until I have additional pix of the next two stages - wetting and final washing to get the bas relief and final Shroud-like result respectively. But if there's anyone wishing to see the first-stage imprint they need only ask.
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ferd burfle
Graduate Poster
It seems you've relied on secondary sources for your information about McCrone's analysis. If you'd have read his peer-reviewed, published paper you'd know his polarized light microscopy results were confirmed by microchemical tests, SEM/EDX elemental analysis and x-ray diffraction. See http://www.mcri.org/v/64/The-Shroud-of-Turin
Unfortunately the link to the paper on that page is broken; PM me if you'd like me to email you a copy.
ETA: The particles he analyzed were absent from the non-image (control) tape samples; the particles he analyzed were the chromophores.
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