Queries & Comments

The Painting of Turin

Marisa Urgo writes that many people believe the Shroud of Turin is authentic because people in the medieval period didn’t have the technology to create the image (Queries & Comments, BAR 25:04). Ms. Urgo believes that they did have the technology, adding, “We just haven’t figured out their technique yet.”

Yes, we have figured it out, Ms. Urgo. I made a comprehensive, objective scientific examination of excellent samples from 32 different areas of the shroud and concluded that the shroud was painted in 1355 by an inspired artist using two very dilute collagen tempera paints: one, red ocher pigment in a gelatin solution for the body image; and two, red ocher plus vermilion pigments in a gelatin solution for the bloodstains.

I know how it must have been done, and I have done it myself. One simply applies these very dilute paints to the contact areas that a sheet of linen shows on covering a body. The intensity of the color is based on cloth-body distance, with less and less color as that distance increases.