Turin shroud goes on display for first time in five years

[hrmjustin]

Stephanie Kirchgaessner

More than a million people from as far afield as Argentina and China are expected to head for Turin in the coming weeks to catch a glimpse of one of Christianity’s most controversial relics, which has gone on display for the first time in five years.

For true believers, the opportunity to shuffle past the holy shroud, a 4.3-metre (14ft) sheet said to be the burial cloth in which the crucified body of Christ was lain, is a rare opportunity.

The cloth, which is usually kept in a sealed container in a dark chapel next to the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist, has been put on display five times since 1933, but was only shown a few times every century before then.

Now, for the first time since 2010, when it was displayed to draw tourists to Turin, believers have another chance to see the cloth, whose true origin is still hotly debated.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/19/turin-shroud-on-display-for-first-time-in-five-years

[okasha]

1. I would like to see the C-14 dating repeated,

using fibers from an uncontestedly original part of the cloth, to settle the date with certainty.

Beyond that, I would like to see a test for the presence of silver salts. The image has all the characteristics of a photographic negative, with lights and shadow reversed. When it is photographed (the old-fashioned way, with a film or plate camera) the developed film presents a positive image. It is extremely unlikely that a medieval artist who had never seen a negative image in his life--who in fact would not know what a negative image is--would be able to produce this effect in paint with the kind of detail and anatomical accuracy seen on the shroud.

So my questions would be:

1. How was this image made? and

2. Who was the artistic genius who effectively invented photography centuries before it became a routinely available medium?