medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Al Magary <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> The Independent has a story quoting the Journal of Optics A
6 (2004), pp. 491-503
> about a second face in the Shroud of Turin, on the underside.
> When last heard from,
?
1988?
>three labs had shown the shroud dated to between 1260 and 1390.
>
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=510996
a nice bit of "objective journalism".
the article itself looks pretty sound and, though a bit more technical than i
can handle, i'll be going through it shorly.
some of the super-enhanced photographs therein remind me of the attempts a few
years ago by some Super Shroudies to "prove" that the coins placed over the
eyes of the Man on the Shroud contained images which can be identified as
consisitent with those found on Roman coins from the first half of the first
century.
to me, the "enhanced" digital photos of those which i've seen are rather
clearly Rorschach Tests masquerading as "evidence".
however, only the most "extreme" photos in the present article are --or might
be-- in that class, and the Journal itself (which i've never seen before)
appears to be a scholarly, peer-reviewed publication.
it looks to me that this is a serious article, well-founded in its
discipline.
there has been quite a lot of "recent" work done --varying greatly in quality,
of course-- to discover exactly how the patently absurd 1988 C-14 dating got
it so wrong.
i haven't kept up on this literature, but the best of what i've seen has it
that the part of the shroud the test samples were taken from was a section
which was compromised by various forms of contamination (perhaps even more so
that the rest of the cloth which, during its known middlevil and early-modern
past had been subjected to repeated handlings, to "trials" by being boiled in
oil, to several fires, etc.).
the bottom line, for me, remains:
i don't know what this artifact *is* ; i only know what it is *not*.
as a reasonably well-trained medieval art historian who has been around the
block (a few times), the idea that this is a "painting" (nor a creation using
any other technique, including those not demonstrably known to the middlevils)
from the period 1260 X 1390 is simply a non-starter.
i am not aware of *any* serious art historian who would support such a view on
the basis of technique, style, iconography or any other analytical catagory
used in the discipline.
best to all from here,
christopher
p.s. And I wish to associate myself with the remarks previously made on the
list regarding the passing of John Mundy.
though i only knew him from the medieval lists and from a very brief off-list
exchange we had a few years ago, he was clearly an accomplished scholar who
was extraordinarily generous with his knowledge and time.
"Eye's borned at neight --bud id waddunt LASS neight..."
--Noted Political Whore (and gubbiner-select of Miss'sipee) Haley Barbour.
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