EL SUDARIO DE TURÍN 🟤 | El Misterio de la Sábana Santa: ¿hemos desvelado finalmente sus secretos?

Kept for more than four centuries inside the Turin Cathedral, protected

behind a bulletproof glass case, lies the most studied object in the history of humanity. A

linen cloth that, since its appearance, has challenged historians, theologians, and scientists.

An old fabric of uncertain origin, worn by the inexorable passage of time, covered with strange

marks, which, nevertheless, has become one of the most precious relics of Catholicism.

An object of veneration for being the only physical evidence of the existence of man whose legacy has

determined the future of civilization. In that airtight glass box, in the absence of

oxygen and the presence of an inert gas, rests what is known as the Holy Shroud. For millions

of believers, the shroud that covered the body of Jesus Christ after the crucifixion,

containing on the fabric an imperishable imprint. The face of the Son of God.

Since the first historical record of its existence in the 14th century, the Shroud of Turin has become

established as an enigmatic artifact. A sheet on which one could recognize the figure,

apparently printed on the fabric, of a man who many have claimed is the Messiah.

For centuries, all attempts to unravel its origin led to dead ends.

Scientific investigations repeatedly failed to provide definitive answers,

thus strengthening all the accounts that treated that shroud as irrefutable proof of the

resurrection of Jesus Christ. Fortunately or unfortunately,

that veil of uncertainty seemed to vanish in the late 1980s, when

radiocarbon dating tests confirmed that the shroud dated from more than 12 centuries

after the death of Christ. It could not be the shroud that covered his body. A discovery

that proved all the skeptics right. For more than thirty years, the consensus among

academic circles was that the Shroud of Turin was nothing more than an ingenious medieval fraud.

A deception concocted more than 1,200 years after that crucifixion described in the gospels.

But against all odds, just when we thought the case was closed, the myth of the Shroud of

Turin resurfaced one last time. In 2024, the Shroud of Turin once again grabbed

headlines in media outlets around the world following a controversial article

published two years earlier in a low-impact scientific journal that had gone

unnoticed until the democracy of social media catapulted it to fame.

A team of Italian scientists from the Institute of Crystallography of Bari, led by

researcher Liberato de Caro, had published a study that revived the debate

about the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin. Using an advanced

X-ray scattering technique, they analyzed the cellulose structure in the linen fibers of the shroud to determine

its age based on its deterioration. Radiocarbon dating in the

1980s placed the shroud between the 13th and 14th centuries, seemingly putting an end

to all speculation. But the findings of the Italian researchers suggested that the

cloth could date back approximately 2,000 years, thus placing it in the time of Jesus Christ

and making it plausible that it was the shroud with which his body was covered.

The scientists themselves admitted in the article that the technique was only reliable if the

analyzed tissue had remained throughout its life in a controlled environment, with a temperature no

lower than 20 degrees and no higher than 22.5 degrees and a humidity between 55 and 75%. They were

presupposing that this sheet, which we knew had survived several

fires in the chapels where it had been kept for more than 2,000 years, had been

preserved in perfect condition. In fact, even assuming that impossibility, the

X-ray dating technique they had used had only been corroborated in another investigation,

coincidentally published in the same journal and carried out by exactly the same team of

scientists who signed that article. Even so, two years after its publication,

the research results were being spread indiscriminately through

social networks and international media. The discussion about the authenticity of the

Shroud of Turin had been completely reopened. The world of faith was clinging to it to

legitimize what could be the most important sacred relic in history. The only true image

of Christ and proof of his resurrection. The story of the Shroud of Turin emerged from the four

Gospels of the New Testament. On the eve of his death, in what is described as the year 33,

Jesus of Nazareth met with his disciples at the Last Supper. He shared bread and wine,

symbolizing his body and blood, and spoke to them of his imminent sacrifice.

He announced that one of them would betray him, leaving the apostles incredulous. But that same night,

Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples, betrayed him to the soldiers with a kiss. Arrested

and brought before the religious leaders, Jesus was accused of blasphemy and handed over to the

Roman governor Pontius Pilate, who sentenced the king of the Jews to die crucified.

Whipped, crowned with thorns and forced to carry his cross to Mount Golgotha,

Jesus faced crucifixion. The sky darkened, and after hours of agony, he breathed his

last. The earth shook. The Son of God had died. A sacrifice that had restored

peace between the Lord and humanity. After his death, Joseph of Arimathea

asked for his body and, together with Nicodemus, prepared the burial. Jesus was embalmed following

Jewish tradition. Anointed with a mixture of myrrh and aloe and wrapped in linen,

the body was placed in a tomb and a large stone was placed at the entrance. The

Roman guards sealed the entrance. Everything seemed to be over.

Saturday passed in oppressive silence. But on Sunday, when it was still early morning,

a group of women went to the tomb. They wanted to anoint the body. Upon arrival,

they found the stone had been moved. The tomb was empty. Through the resurrection,

Christ had conquered death, fulfilling the promises he had made during his life.

When the news reached his disciples, Peter and John ran to the tomb. It wasn't

empty. Something had remained. The sheet in which the body had been wrapped. The two

apostles took the shroud. The unique legacy of the death and resurrection of the Son of God.

The Holy Shroud is not mentioned again in the Gospels. Its fate after the removal from the

tomb is a mystery. It does not reappear in any document or historical record until more than a

thousand years later, when in the mid-14th century, an important French knight left the first

historical record of that shroud. In 1355, Geoffrey de Charny displayed in a

church in Lirey, France, a sheet that he had obtained during the crusades in the Holy Land.

According to medieval chronicles, the knight made it public as an object of devotion,

claiming that it was the shroud that covered Christ before and during the resurrection.

This was the starting point for the documented history of its existence in Europe. A

sheet measuring 4.4 meters long by 1 meter wide contained the image of a man

who had been tortured, showing both his front and back. A portrait of the

face of Christ printed on the cloth. The shroud contained a large number of

bloodstains in areas consistent with crucifixion, including head wounds

similar to those that could be obtained with a crown of thorns. On his back, signs of

having been whipped repeatedly. Such was the belief in its sacred origin that a

year after its exhibition, in 1356, Pope Innocent VI issued a letter recognizing

the public worship of what became known as the Holy Shroud of Lirey, giving an important boost

to its dissemination and consolidating it as an object of religious devotion in the Middle Ages.

The shroud belonged to the Charny family for a century, until in 1453,

Godfrey's granddaughter sold it to the court of the Dukes of Savoy, one of the most powerful families in

Europe. In his hands, the shroud was transferred to the castle of Chambéry, in present-day France, and

kept in its royal chapel inside a silver box. With the Vatican's approval,

the pilgrimage to the castle became a constant, until the shroud was very

close to disappearing forever. On the night of December 3, 1532,

a devastating fire in the castle of Chambéry affected the chapel where

the Shroud was kept. The fire damaged the silver box in which it rested, but surprisingly, it

survived. It didn't burn completely, but it did suffer significant damage. Holes caused

by the flames and watermarks resulting from desperate efforts to extinguish them.

In the aftermath of the disaster, the congregation of Poor Clare nuns in the city of Chambéry

restored the shroud, using sewing techniques to cover the damage and holes with a

linen fabric that was placed over the original cloth. A rudimentary task that allowed the shroud to be

preserved for later generations and that, unknowingly, would prevent speculation

about its origin from being completely closed. After the fire, the Savoy family

decided to move the Shroud of Turin to ensure its preservation. Thus,

in 1578, the relic was taken to what is still its resting place today, four centuries later

. The Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin. The shroud was kept in the Royal Chapel,

specifically built to house it. A protected place, out of public view.

No one, outside of a select group of people, was able to contemplate it for almost 300 years.   It

was not until 1842 that Pope Gregory XVI authorized the first public display of the

Holy Shroud in Turin, an event that generated great excitement among believers and curious onlookers. After a long

silence that caused the memory and importance of that relic to fade over time,

interest in what was already known in Italy as the Shroud of Turin began to grow slowly

with each of the infrequent exhibitions. Everything was leading to a turning point.

The moment the sheet achieved international fame and the eyes of the

whole world were fixed on those lifeless eyes.

For a long time, the existence of the Holy Shroud was known only

to a few niches within the Italian Catholic faith. Science and the

general public remained unaware of the historical relevance of that relic kept

in Turin. But everything changed after the first photograph of that shroud.

In 1898, the Savoy family allowed Secondo Pia, an Italian lawyer and amateur photographer,

to take snapshots of the sheet. During the process, he gave a lengthy presentation

that would show the world the details of that mysterious sacred relic.

But the great discovery came when he developed the photographs and saw that the negative,

with the colors and tones inverted with respect to reality, was a

sharper and clearer image than what could be seen with the naked eye. The features of the

man's face and body on the sheet became more evident, more defined. A whole

reality invisible to the human eye. It was as if the image on the sheet was the

negative and with that revelation, what we called the photographic negative,

we were seeing the positive. The wounds and features were so detailed that it gave the

impression of being a portrait of the person on the shroud. A visual confirmation

of many of the details mentioned in the Bible about the crucifixion of Christ.

After the publication of Secondo Pia's photographs, the Shroud of Turin achieved

rapid worldwide fame. Millions were fascinated by the details printed on the

shroud, and the debate between scientists and theologians about whether the image on it was the true

portrait of the historical Jesus erupted. Similarly, detractors

also began to question the very veracity of the Shroud, using Pia's images to argue

that it had to be an artistic creation, that what we saw on the cloth was paint, the

product of medieval manipulation. Suddenly, the Shroud of Turin had become established

as the most controversial, enigmatic, and interesting of the sacred relics. This

intensified when, in 1931, Giuseppe Enrie gained access to the sheet and his negatives showed

exactly the same thing as the first time. Despite widespread doubts for over

thirty years about whether Pia had manipulated the photographs, it had become clear that she did not

lie. The negatives were real. In the years and decades that followed,

scientific and theological interest in the shroud grew until its peak,

when in 1973 the first color television broadcast of the Holy Shroud was made. Millions

of people around the world saw in all its splendor a relic that was still covered by

a veil of shadows that had to be removed. On October 8, 1978, with the approval of

the Catholic Church and the then custodian of the shroud, more than 600 years after its appearance,

a team of researchers was able to carry out the first scientific analysis on the

Holy Shroud. The Shroud of Turin Research Project aimed

to analyze the cloth with the most advanced technology of the time to determine how

the image was formed and, above all, whether there was evidence of forgery.

The team, made up of 40 scientists from various disciplines, including physicists,

chemists, microbiologists and forensic analysts, traveled to the Turin Cathedral, where they were

granted 120 hours to study the shroud. No one in history had ever had such access

to the relic. And most likely, no one would ever have it again.

They took snapshots in visible, infrared, and ultraviolet light to examine the details of the

image, which, through a device called VP-8, they were able to confirm contained

three-dimensional information, something that does not happen with conventional paintings or photographs.

They performed X-ray scans to detect chemical elements or artificial pigments on

the linen. The properties of the image were studied using spectroscopy methods and

fluorescence analysis. The linen fibers of the fabric were examined under microscopes to

see if they contained traces of paint. The stains were studied with hematological tests to

determine if they were real blood. It was the most comprehensive scientific study

ever conducted on a single object. Everyone assumed that they were going to close all the debates.

But when in 1981, after two years of analyzing the data obtained, they published the conclusions of the

study, the enigma surrounding the shroud was more alive than ever. The findings fueled all

the speculation. They could confirm that the image was not made with any known paint,

ink, or pigment. They hadn't even found traces of brushstrokes or

visible marks under the microscope. It appeared to be formed more by a

dehydration and surface oxidation of the fibers, as if the linen had been "burned"

in a way they could not explain, without penetrating deeply into the fabric. A fabric in which

they also found pollen from Gundelia tournefortii, a thorny plant that only grows in the

Jerusalem region and that had already been linked in the past to the crown of thorns

mentioned in the Gospels. The red stains were indeed

consistent with human blood type AB, with exceptionally high levels of bilirubin,

suggesting that the person covered by that sheet suffered severe trauma,

possibly prolonged torture. With ultraviolet light images they had been

able to discover traces of blood serum that had remained invisible

all that time until they had stimulated their fluorescence. Either a medieval artist had

predicted the invention of UV fluorescence techniques 700

years ago, or that blood was real. With all the technology of the time at their disposal,

they found not a single sign of medieval forgery and could not explain how the image was formed

. The investigation concluded clearly. There is no known natural or artificial mechanism

that can replicate the effect seen on the Shroud of Turin.

The team proved that the sheet was neither paint nor an obvious forgery,

but they also could not prove that it was authentic. Everything remained in a strange limbo that generated even

more interest in the relic. Many critics argued that many of the

team members had Christian beliefs that could have influenced their approach.

The world wanted clear answers. Undeniable evidence that would put an end to the

debate. And all roads led to the same place. Determine the age of the

shroud. An ambition that would take years to materialize due to the high price it demanded.

Before dying in March 1983, Umberto II of Savoy, the last king of Italy

and legitimate owner of the shroud, ceded it to the Pope through his will,

specifying that the shroud should always remain under the custody of the Supreme Pontiff.

From then on, the Vatican was to be the sole legal guardian of the Shroud of Turin. The Pope

would decide on its conservation, exhibition, and scientific studies. And against all odds,

in a historic decision, John Paul II granted permission to carry out

the definitive analysis on the shroud. The Church authorized radiocarbon dating

of the Shroud in order to determine its true age, giving

researchers permission to break off a small fragment of the shroud, a 7 x 1 centimeter piece from the

damaged lower left corner, and send the samples to three independent laboratories:

Oxford University, the University of Arizona and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.

The institutions were going to perform carbon-14 dating on it. A method

that uses the radioactive isotope of carbon to determine the age of

living tissue. All organisms absorb this unstable radiocarbon, which decays

over time, while they are alive. When they die, the exchange stops and

carbon-14 begins to decompose at a constant rate into nitrogen. A process known as

radioactive decay. Knowing that the half-life of the isotope is 5,730 years and that,

therefore, after that time half of the radiocarbon in a material would have

decayed, by measuring the amount that remains in a sample, it is possible to calculate how much time has

passed since it stopped absorbing carbon. Or, to put it another way, when did that being die?

The Shroud of Turin was made of linen, a fiber obtained from a plant. A living being. If

they measured how much carbon-14 remained in the fabric, they would know when that linen was cut and, therefore,

the age of that venerated relic. When performing radiocarbon dating,

the three laboratories obtained similar dates. With a 95% degree of certainty,

they could affirm that the shroud dated from some time between 1260 and 1390 AD,

a time frame that included the year in which Godfrey de Charny presented it

after apparently having rescued it from the Holy Land. The sheet was made

in the Middle Ages. It could not have been the shroud that covered the body of Christ.

The results made headlines in media outlets around the world. It was a scientific fact that the

Shroud of Turin could not be the burial cloth of Jesus of Nazareth, who supposedly

died thirteen hundred years before that cloth was woven.

The story seemed to end there. Radiocarbon dating was understandably

considered the definitive evidence of its falsity. But more than three decades later,

even if it was at the hands of an article that could not stand on its own, the myth had been

reborn. And there were still many questions waiting to be answered.

The origin of the sheet could be resolved through that radiocarbon dating.

But what no one had ever been able to explain was what really made that

shroud a revered relic. The image captured of a man. The face and body

of that person remained a mystery. The dark and bleached regions on the fabric

that create the image are only in the uppermost part of the linen fibers, penetrating

only 0.2 micrometers in depth. They are not present either in the middle or under the fabric. Something

that was already very strange in itself. If the man's body had been

covered by the garment and left an imprint, the discoloration would have to be visible on the

lower part where it was actually in contact with the corpse. This, along with the

radiocarbon dating, strengthened the idea that the whole thing was a fraud. A medieval forgery.

The sudden appearance of the Shroud in the mid- 14th century coincides with the historical moment when

sacred relics began to be surrounded by powerful conflicts of interest.

Because relics were a source of wealth. People paid money to see them, to touch them.

And the wealthy donated large sums of money for its protection and preservation. Hundreds of

churches in Europe displayed artifacts that they claimed were connected to Christ.

When de Charny appeared with the shroud in 1355, it was immediately displayed in his church in Lirey,

making it a tremendously famous place in the region, receiving dozens of pilgrims who

wanted to be in contact with the sheet that showed the face of the Messiah. And even at that

moment, someone doubted its authenticity. In 1389, Pierre d’Arcis, the bishop of Laon in

France, wrote a letter to Pope Clement VII denouncing the Shroud of Lirey as a

fake. That shroud had not covered Jesus' body. It was a fraud created by an artist so

that Charny could enrich himself with it. Despite the allegations, the Pope did not

intervene directly in the matter nor take an official position regarding authenticity. In

fact, he urged d’Arcis to stop talking about the subject under threat of excommunication.

According to the bishop, the image on the shroud was not the result of a miracle. It was the work

of a painter who had printed the image on the fabric. Carbon-14 dating was

strengthening the idea of ​​forgery, but there was a fundamental problem with that view.

We know perfectly the pigments that painters used in the Middle Ages. And as had

already been demonstrated with the 1978 project, there were no traces of any dye or

product used in medieval painting on the shroud. At a time when fake relics did

n't have to be sophisticated. At a time when virtually no one questioned

what they saw, why would someone create such a complex forgery, capable of outsmarting the

science that would arrive 600 years later? It was clear that the simplest answer, that it was

a painting, could not solve the enigma. But if they were going to defend

that idea of ​​forgery, they had to find a way to explain, conclusively,

how that image got there without a single drop of paint touching the sheet.

And there seemed to be only one answer. That the image on the Shroud of Turin was created through

a primitive photographic process, long before the invention of modern photography.

The hypothesis suggested that a real body could have been illuminated and projected onto a canvas,

in this case the linen shroud, treated with photosensitive substances within a

dark space, something that in the medieval era was known as a camera obscura.

The light reflected by the body passes through a small hole in the room,

projecting its inverted image onto the sheet on the opposite wall. A kind of

natural projector. In order for the image to be printed on the fabric, it would have had to be

coated with a substance that reacted to light, probably with silver nitrate.

When exposed to reflected light for hours or days, the image would technically have been

imprinted on the fabric like a photographic negative, which would explain why,

when Secondo Pia developed his photographs, the negative appeared to be the positive, showing

more detail than the original image. In any case, although camera obscuras

existed, there was no evidence that people in the Middle Ages knew how to treat

fabrics with photosensitive substances.  There were also no distortions in the image,

which was to be expected if a three-dimensional body had indeed been projected onto a flat surface;

Nor has any other example of this method been found in history.

Doubts about the hypothesis ended up being definitive when the reanalysis of the

chemical data from the 1978 project showed that no trace of silver salts was found

in the linen of the sheet. If there were no photosensitive substances, it was impossible for a forger to

have printed the image on the sheet. If it wasn't a painting or a primitive photograph,

the forgery theory began to falter. If nothing explained how

that fraud was carried out, it's because perhaps there was never any fraud.

Taking the radiocarbon dating and the authenticity of the sheet as real,

a new theory was germinating. Perhaps the image on the shroud was evidence of a crucifixion. But

not in the way we thought. That sheet perhaps did not cover the body of Christ, but that of the

last of the Templar masters. By the 14th century, the Order of the Knights

Templar, originally created to protect Christian pilgrims on their journeys

to the Holy Land, had become an extremely powerful and influential organization.

A threat to the power of the Church. Claiming that the Templars were heretics who did

not practice the faith in the proper way, on October 13, 1307, King Philip IV of France,

with the approval of Pope Clement V, ordered the extinction of the order, leading to the arrest

of the one who at that time was the Grand Master of the Templars: the knight Jacques de Molay.

The cruelty of the French Inquisition was unleashed upon the French nobleman, who,

accused of heresy and blasphemy, was condemned to be crucified. A punishment that did not seek to

kill him. All they wanted was to obtain a confession of their heretical behavior within

the order through torture. After achieving this, the Inquisition had

prepared one last humiliation for the knight. De Molay was embalmed alive

in a shroud and left for 24 hours. After that ordeal, the nobleman survived to

live seven more years before being executed at the stake for renouncing his confession.

There are stories that tell of how a knight named Jean took the shroud of

his master's torture and kept it as a symbol of the Templar order's struggle. The

curious thing is that this Jean was the grandfather of Geoffrey de Charny, who less than fifty

years after the torture of De Molay presented the Shroud of Turin to the world.

The date, 1307, fell within the age range of radiocarbon dating,

which indicated that the shroud was made between 1260 and 1390. But it was all

based on speculation not proven by historical records. Even assuming

the Templar connection theory was true, the formation of the image remained inexplicable.

And it was even possible that that paradigm of the Shroud Age would have to be rewritten.

Perhaps the result of the radiocarbon dating was incorrect. The

1988 analysis had determined that the linen of the shroud dated from between 1260 and 1390 AD. But

for the dating to be reliable, the sample could not be contaminated with more recent carbon-14

. And it was here that the door to speculation opened again.

To date the shroud, researchers cut a fragment of fabric from a corner that might not

be representative of the original shroud. That edge was visibly damaged,

suggesting that it might contain fibers from a medieval restoration following the

fire it survived in 1532. When the congregation of nuns repaired the

shroud, they introduced new 16th-century threads that may have placed

the dating somewhere between that time and the first century. Moreover,

the Chambéry fire itself may have played a fundamental role.

We know that at high temperatures, fire can alter the

carbon balance in an ancient object. If the sheet absorbed modern carbon during the fire,

the dating result could indicate a more recent date than the actual one, giving

misleading results even assuming that the corner analyzed did not come from the nuns' restoration

and was original fabric. There were many reasons why the

result of the carbon-14 dating might not be definitive. But even if that

reasonable doubt didn't mean it dated back to the time of Christ, when news

of that turn in the investigation reached the public, seemingly legitimizing the

validity of the controversial 2022 X-ray study , conjectures and fantastical tales

flourished again as they had decades before. Suspicions about the dating of the

1980s and the impossibility of finding a scientific explanation for the image on

the shroud led many to see a definitive sign to consecrate the

Holy Shroud as the most important of the relics of Christendom.

Some believers and theologians proposed that the image was not the product of a natural process,

but of a supernatural event that occurred at the moment of Christ's resurrection and that,

they promised, it was partially supported by scientific evidence.

In 2011, Italian physicist Paolo Di Lazzaro demonstrated in the laboratory that certain bursts

of ultraviolet laser light can produce surface images on linen with characteristics

similar to those of the Shroud of Turin. However, it also stipulated that this type of energy, in the

necessary amount, equivalent to 14,000 lasers impacting the fabric for 40 nanoseconds, is

not found naturally on Earth and no technology prior to the 20th century could

allow its execution. But some thought that God's power could allow it.

According to his hypothesis, the image of the man on the shroud was formed as a result of an

intense energy emission from Christ's own body at the moment he resurrected. An

unknown radiation of divine origin. A burst of light that would have imprinted its image on the fabric as if it were

a photographic exhibition. The same process that Di Lazzaro had proven could form

the image, generated by the power of God. Proponents of the theory believed that the

Gospels proved that Christ could channel that energy. The Transfiguration of Jesus is an

episode described in the Bible in which, accompanied by three of his disciples and on

the top of a mountain, his face shines like the sun and his clothes turn white like the

purest light, showing the apostles his divine nature before the Passion.

This phenomenon could have been repeated in the most important event of the Christian faith. The image on

the Shroud of Turin could have been formed by that light emitted at the resurrection,

similar to the luminous transfiguration on the mount, leaving an indelible image on

the cloth. A snapshot of the moment the Son of God returned to life.

Although attractive and fascinating from a religious point of view, the idea of ​​the

image being formed by a miraculous radiation had no scientific backing. That glimmer

of the Resurrection had to remain within the respectable realm of faith. But they had to put an

end to the enigma once and for all. They were aware that

radiocarbon dating was not the definitive proof that we had believed it to be for so many years. As far as

scientific evidence is concerned, it was as likely to date from the Middle Ages as from the time

of Christ. And without new dating studies, without new permission from the Church to damage

the shroud, the mystery was going to endure. They were not going to be able to determine if the image of that

man was that of someone contemporary to Jesus, so even less were they going to be able to

point to him as that person covered by the shroud. All they could do,

having ruled out the idea of ​​a forgery, was to find a natural process

that would explain the formation of the image. Thus, they developed the theory that the

image on the Shroud of Turin could have been formed due to the oils and ointments used to

embalm the body of Jesus or the man who had been covered by that shroud.

The Jews wrapped the bodies in linen and covered them with mixtures of oils, such as

the myrrh and aloe described in the gospels, to mitigate the smell of decomposition.

Some studies suggest that these oils could have interacted with sweat,

blood, and other bodily fluids, generating an image by direct contact or by oxidation

of the material, in an effect similar to that of a paint or a chemical print on the fabric.

The problem is that if the image had been formed by that friction with the ointments and fluids, the

silhouette should be deformed, distorted by the pressure of the canvas against the body. The

Shroud of Turin shows precise anatomical details and correct proportions, making it difficult to believe

that it was produced by that mechanism. Furthermore, experiments attempting

to reproduce similar images with oils on ancient fabrics have not yielded the same results. It made no

sense for the image to be on the upper part of the fabric and not on the lower part where it

was supposedly in contact with the oils. The type of discoloration on the linen of the shroud

is not consistent with the absorption of liquids, and although it is true that they could have evaporated

in the fire of 1532, no traces of oils, ointments, or perfumes were found on the fabric.