HANDLE WITH CARE...

The last blog I posted dealt with the reality - or otherwise - of  'replicas' and whether the experience of viewing them is compromised by the awareness that what you are viewing is not the 'original'. The artifact I want to discuss this week is undeniably real, undeniably 'original' - in so far as there will never be a copy made of it - but an original  'what'  is more open to question...and is it real or is it a fake?

An artifact moreover that the art world chooses to ignore almost totally, on the grounds that if it's a fake it would overturn pretty much all current beliefs and understanding of artistic development in Europe prior to the Renaissance... a 'fake' causing trouble ? ..........and if it's real it causes even more trouble...........   hhhhmmmmm........ so lets see...

The Turin Shroud has been kept in a protective casket in Turin since around 1550; it purports to be the winding cloth - or ' shroud ' - of a male who was crucified some 2000 years or so ago. However, its claim to be a genuine artifact has assumed to be largely discredited since the findings of carbon dating tests undertaken in 2001 appear to indicate that it dates from circa 1260/1390. A fake . Case closed. End of investigation, end of interest - just a cheap medieval counterfeit.

I think what I find frustrating here is that those people who go for the ' fake ' option seem to think 'thats it , sorted ' . Unfortunately it isn't. Lets have a look at a reasonable analogy - faking a fossil . A genuine fossil is the realisation of a natural process ; dinosaur approaches river, falls in or is caught by flash flood, dies , is buried under mud or silt ; flesh decays, and over eons the skeleton is preserved in strata that is slowly compressed into rock , to reappear during future erosion of the land form. A natural process, no third party or other agent involved. To produce a fake fossil, however....ah...you have to have a full and total understanding of the structure of the ' fossil animal ', a full understanding of what would be preserved, a full and clear understanding of the context in which it is found - i.e. the right rocks from the right geological period - and above all the technique to be able to physically produce at the very least a passable facsimile in the right material context.  A lot more complicated that just falling over and dying in the river.

Let's return to the Shroud . Housed as we have said in Turin Cathedral since around 1550 , a fairly well established historical provenance for the previous 150 years or so dates it back to around 1390 - the end of the ' carbon dating ' window. So if we assume its a fake, then the questions that arise are How ? By Who ? Why ?  How........given that the artifact dated to this point is almost exactly contemporary with the work of Giotto. it bears no resemblance whatsoever to any known form of pictorial representation from this period ;
furthermore, the process and technology through which the image is primarily recognised, that of the photographic negative , did not even exist for another 450 years or so....so why would someone go to all the trouble of producing an image that is this obscure ? Detailed analysis of the image shows no trace of any pigment either lying on the surface of the material or within the individual strands of the weave , and at this moment no one is still quite sure how the image is formed ; the nearest anyone can get to it is ' some form of scorching '. Further , increasing doubts over the veracity of the carbon dating issues suggest that even the dating of the ' fake ' may be questionable.

The Shroud and its' history, its ' physicality ' , is more than adequately documented on the internet - http://www.shroud.com/ - so what interests me here I suppose is the question of authenticity............... either ' real ' or 'fake ' , both alternatives require verification to justify their status - the ' fake ' option raising as many questions as the ' real ' option, and it is not sufficiant to just accept ' fake ' as the default position without acknowledging the inherent questions that lie therein . It seems to me that the burden of proof here lies with both options ; the artifact, however continues to exist as an enigma and it may well be  that its very power lies in its continuing unresolved state -  ' the inherent power of the Mystery '.

" Once you eliminate the impossible , whatever remains , no matter how improbable , must be the truth "  Sherlock Holmes