Demonstration calls shroud into question

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Could you look upon the face of Christ? Many believe the Shroud of Turin portrays the death mask of Jesus of Nazareth, despite overwhelming historical and contextual evidence suggesting it was created in the 14th century to drive the pilgrimage tourism industry.

Chemist Robert Morton explained at a Good Friday seminar at the Walters Art Museum’s Graham Auditorium how a realistic shroud could be made using common scribe’s chemicals available throughout human history.

Morton prepared linen cloth with an iron solution, and then brought the coloration out with tannic acids — revealing images of his wife, and his daughter?s boyfriend similar to the faint negative image on the shroud.

“The more pressure you put on it, the tannic acid moves around on the cloth so you get more reaction,” Morton said.

In his “shroud of Leo” his bluetick hound, Morton said the pressure sensitivity revealed the eyeball and cornea under Leo’s closed eyelid.

He did not, however, make any claim about whether those methods were used in the shroud housed in Turin, Italy.

“I’m a chemist, I make observations,” Morton said. “We don’t have an opinion, we speak of possibilities.”

Measuring just over 14 feet long and 3 1/2 feet wide, the shroud reveals the image of a naked man bearing all the wounds attributed to the crucified Christ in the Gospel narratives, said Gary Vikan, director of the Walters Art Gallery.

“The shroud is without a doubt the most powerful and compelling image in Christianity,” Vikan said.

However, since its appearance in Lisey, France, in 1357, the shroud has been surrounded by controversy, including a letter from Bishop Henri of Poitiers saying a craftsman told him how it was made.

“This is how the shroud appears for the first time in history ? being denounced as a fake,” Vikan said.

The event drew a full house, though not everyone was convinced the Shroud of Turin was created using the methods Morton described.

Morton isone of “at least a dozen people in the last couple of decades that have created an image in cloth” to explain the shroud, said Bob Lienhardt, who holds a doctoral degree in art history from the Sorbonne University.

The tanning ink demonstration did not sway Allen Holden, a self-described scholar of the supernatural with a focus on Catholic Church history and mysteries. “There are hundreds of plant compounds in the shroud,” he said, including pollen and plants dating to first century Palestine.

Vikan said he did not have expertise in plant compounds but suggested bringing in an expert to discuss those findings at a future date.

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