Scientist recreates Turin Shroud to show it’s fake
- Story Highlights
- Scientist recreates Shroud of Turin to support his belief it is a medieval fake
- Many Christians have believed shroud is actual burial shroud of Jesus
- Luigi Garlaschelli made copy by wrapping cloth over student, baking and washing it
By Richard Allen Greene
CNN(CNN) — An Italian scientist says he has reproduced one of the world’s most famous Catholic relics, the Shroud of Turin, to support his belief it is a medieval fake, not the cloth Jesus was buried in.
Luigi Garlaschelli created a copy of the shroud by wrapping a specially woven cloth over one of his students, painting it with pigment, baking it in an oven (which he called a “shroud machine”) for several hours, then washing it.
His result looks like the cloth that many Christians through the centuries have believed is the actual burial shroud of Jesus, he told CNN.
“What you have now is a very fuzzy, dusty and weak image,” he said. “Then for the sake of completeness I have added the bloodstains, the burns, the scorching because there was a fire in 1532.”
Garlaschelli says his work disproves the claims of the shroud’s strongest supporters.
“Basically the Shroud of Turin has some strange properties and characteristics that they say cannot be reproduced by human hands,” he told CNN by phone from Italy, where he is a professor of organic chemistry at the University of Pavia.
“For example, the image is superficial and has no pigment, it looks so lifelike and so on, and therefore they say it cannot have been done by an artist.”
His research shows the pigment may simply have worn off the cloth over the centuries since it was first “discovered” in 1355, but impurities in the pigment etched an image into the fibers of the cloth, leaving behind the ghostly picture that remains today.
“The procedure is very simple. The artist took this sheet and put it over one of his assistants,” he said.
“His good idea was to wrap the sheet over the person underneath because he didn’t want to obtain an image that was too obviously a painting or a drawing, so with this procedure you get a strange image,” said Garlaschelli.
“Time did the rest,” he said.
He undertook the research out of personal interest, he said.
“As a hobby I am interested in mysteries, and the Shroud of Turin is obviously a very mysterious object,” he said.
He described himself as a rationalist, but said he is not specifically anti-religious.
“I am not a believer, but I am first of all a curious person, and I like to investigate these mysteries, not necessarily related to religion,” he said. “It’s not my fault if in Italy most of these paranormal facts are related to religion. If the church would like to fund me (to do research), I am ready.”
The Shroud of Turin is a linen sheet more than 14 feet long and 3 feet, 7 inches wide that carries an imprinted image of the front and the back of a crucified man, according to the Catholic Archdiocese of Turin.
“The imprint shows the peculiar characteristics that usually belong to a photographic negative,” says the Web site of the shroud, which is maintained by the archdiocese.
The Vatican does not have an official position on whether the relic is genuinely the cloth Jesus was buried in after being crucified.
“Since it is not a matter of faith, the church has no specific competence to pronounce on these questions,” the late Pope John Paul II said in 1998.
Carbon dating in the 1990s suggested it dates from the Middle Ages.
But John Paul II insisted it is important to learn lessons from the relic, whether or not it is genuine.
“The imprint left by the tortured body of the crucified one, which attests to the tremendous human capacity for causing pain and death to one’s fellow man, stands as an icon of the suffering of the innocent in every age,” he said in an address at Turin Cathedral, the home of the shroud.
“Before the shroud, how can we not think of the millions of people who die of hunger, of the horrors committed in the many wars that soak nations in blood, of the brutal exploitation of women and children, of the millions of human beings who live in hardship and humiliation on the edges of great cities, especially in developing countries?” the pope asked.
The Vatican has not responded to Garlaschelli’s research, which was funded by the Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics, he said.
He dabbled on the project for years, he said, starting with handkerchief-size pieces of cloth and different combinations of acid and pigment, before making his shroud this summer.
Now that he knows how to do it, he could make another one in about a week, he estimated.
The greatest expense was having a cloth specially woven to mimic the shroud, he said.
He did not have access to the shroud itself, which is usually kept in a special chamber, away from public view.
“Only a few very chosen persons have direct access to it,” he said, adding he had relied on “the published data” about the relic.
He is due to present his findings Saturday at a conference of the Italian Committee for the Investigation of Claims on the Paranormal. He has also written a 50-page paper that he hopes to publish in a scientific journal.
The real Shroud of Turin is due to go on display to the public in April and May of 2010. It was last put on public view in 1998 and 2000, but has undergone extensive restoration since then, including removing a backing and patches added over the centuries.
Have mythbusters proven the Turin Shroud is fake?
If you were brought up a Catholic, as a child, you were taught about the power of mysteries.
One mystery that I used to always find perplexing was how the face of Jesus Christ was superimposed on the Turin Shroud, a burial cloth that measures 14 feet, 4 inches by 3 feet, 7 inches.
Somehow, the face looked a little too much like the Jesus in all the religious pictures. It all seemed a little too perfect. And, as one grew up, one began to learn that nothing was quite that perfect. Not even priests.
Now an Italian scientist and his team claim to have debunked this mystery.
According to Reuters, an organic chemist from the University of Pavia called Luigi Garlaschelli has created a shroud replica and plans to reveal the results of his work at a conference on the paranormal (and, who knows, of the paranormal) later this week.
An artistic depiction of the Shroud.
(Credit: CC Buridan/Flickr
In order not to cheat, Garlaschelli says he availed himself only of materials that were accessible in the Middle Ages, the period from which carbon dating by various laboratories suggested the shroud emanates.
He and his team used a pigment that contained a little skeptical acid to do the basic rubbing on a volunteer wearing a Jesus mask.
Then, in a process that seems to eerily resemble the production of faded clothing by teenagers, they heated the shroud in an oven and washed it. Finally, they added a few holes and stains for additional authenticity.
It all sounds suspiciously easy. Indeed, it all sounds as if someone wants to create a little anti-Catholic publicity. (The Church doesn’t even claim that the Turin Shroud is genuine.) As with so much research these days, it is good to look to the source of funding to see who might be so very keen to bankroll a debunking.
Garlaschelli admits that he did take money from an Italian association of atheists and agnostics. However, he has offered his services to the Church too. “Money has no odor,” was his somewhat-romantic quote to Reuters.
But something about this experiment does suggest a peculiar smell. The University of Pavia is one of the oldest in Europe. Don’t the professors have something a little more interesting to do than trying to upset my mum and dad?
New Shroud of Turin Evidence: A Closer Look
An Italian scientist and his team claim to have replicated the Shroud of Turin, believed by many to be the burial cloth of Jesus. Luigi Garlaschelli, a professor of chemistry at the University of Pavia, used linen identical to that on the famous shroud, made an impression over a volunteer’s face and body, and artificially aged the cloth with heat.
The result is a fabricated shroud that very closely resembles the Shroud of Turin, made with materials and tools available at the time of the shroud’s origin. Garlaschelli’s reproduction won’t, of course, satisfy the true believers. Nor (despite headlines to the contrary) does it conclusively prove that the Shroud of Turin is a fake. It does, however, disprove a claim almost as important: that the image on the shroud is scientifically unexplainable, and could not have been made by human hands.
Of course, just because the Shroud of Turin could have been faked doesn’t mean that it was faked. To cast real doubt on the cloth’s authenticity, there would have to be other reasons–some corroborative evidence–to think the shroud is a forgery.
In fact, the shroud had previously been carbon dated not to the time of Christ but instead to the 14th century—perhaps not coincidentally about the time when the first record of the burial cloth appears. If the Turin Shroud really is the most important holy relic in history, it seems odd that no one knew of its existence for 1,300 years.
There’s another very good reason to suspect that the Shroud of Turin is a fake: the forger admitted it. As Joe Nickell, author of “Relics of the Christ,” noted, a document by “Bishop Pierre d’Arcis claimed that the shroud had been ‘cunningly painted,’ a fact ‘attested by the artist who painted it.’” Not only did Bishop d’Arcis attest to knowing that the shroud was a fake in 1390, but even Pope Clement acknowledged the forgery. (The Catholic Church does not officially endorse the shroud as authentic.)
The debate over the Shroud of Turin shows no signs of abating, but Garlaschelli’s Shroud of Pavia debunks another claim for its authenticity.
The Shroud is said to show Christ’s face at his crucifixion
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The Shroud of Turin has been reproduced by an Italian scientist in another attempt to prove that the cloth bearing an image of Christ’s face is a fake.
A professor of organic chemistry at the University of Pavia said he had used materials and techniques that were available in the Middle Ages.
These included applying pigment to cloth and then heating it in an oven.
Tests 20 years ago dated the fabric to between 1260 and 1390, but believers say it is an authentic image of Christ.
The linen cloth, measuring about 4.4m by 1.1m (14.4ft by 3.6ft), holds the concealed image of a man bearing all the signs of crucifixion, including blood stains.
Tests in 1988 have been repeatedly challenged, and scientists remain unsure how the image came to be on the cloth.
Scientist Luigi Garlaschelli, who is due to present his findings to a conference on the paranormal at the weekend, said many people believed that the shroud “has unexplainable characteristics that cannot be reproduced by human means”.
But, he added: “The result obtained clearly indicates that this could be done with the use of inexpensive materials and with a quite simple procedure.”
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 If they don’t want to believe carbon dating done by some of the world’s best laboratories they certainly won’t believe me.  Luigi Garlaschelli
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Mr Garlaschelli, funded by a group of Italian atheists and agnostics, reproduced the shroud by placing a linen sheet flat over a volunteer and then rubbing it with a pigment containing traces of acid. A mask was used for the face.
The pigment was then artificially aged by heating the cloth in an oven and washing it.
This removed the pigment from the surface but left a half-tone image similar to that on the Shroud.
Blood stains, burn holes, scorches and water stains were then added to achieve the final effect.
Mr Garlaschelli said he expected people to challenge his research.
“If they don’t want to believe carbon dating done by some of the world’s best laboratories they certainly won’t believe me.”
The Shroud is kept in Turin Cathedral and is rarely displayed in public.
