La Disputa

Relics have always interested me, for they are allegedly “proof” of a certain (religious, legendary or mythological) event. Churches are built around such artifacts – the Basilica of St. Anthony has the saint’s tongue in a reliquary, for example. One of the most important and notorious relics is the Shroud of Turin (the famous blanket that covered Christ’s face post-mortem and came away with an imprint of that same face). There is a shroud that is kept at the Cathedral of John the Baptist, Turin, Italy. Of course there are many debates and mysteries concerning whether it is the real one.  Scientific research is having problems with what seems like a great forgery.

Cut for blasphemy…

Although carbon-dating gives it a c.1260-1320 date (over a thousand years too late anyway), the first sighting of the shroud was documented in 1523.

By Leonardo da Vinci.

According to some art historians, it appears that the royal family of Turin (who had a shroud) realized it to be a badly-made fake that couldn’t stand to the test of highly ranked Catholic clergymen, and commissioned LdV to create a much better forgery. Of course this has never been proven (and who’d dare?), but there is something to say about the similarities in the faces. The sloping nose, the high cheekbones, the similarly proportioned foreheads…. perhaps there is something in this, after all?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 30th, 2008 at 4:43 pm and is filed under Art Alert. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.