“But in either case—first century or fourteenth—you’re sure it’s a fake.”
“Define fake. I’m sure it’s an illustration, Dr. B—I’d stake my life on that. I think it was created during the Middle Ages. And I’ve got a pretty good idea who did it. But fake? That implies fraud or deception. And there’s a chance—a small chance, at least—that it wasn’t created to defraud or deceive.”
“I’m afraid I’m not following you, Emily.”
“Okay, this might sound farfetched,” she said, “but just consider this scenario for a second. What if the Shroud was created in the spirit of an autopsy photo? Back in the days before photography existed. What if it was an attempt to capture a moment, to document exactly how Jesus looked when he was taken down from the cross?”
I hadn’t expected this wrinkle in the Shroud. “But you just said you thought it was made in the Middle Ages. So how could it capture a moment that happened fourteen centuries before?”
She sighed. “Okay, here’s where it gets farfetched. Suppose there was an earlier Shroud, one that did date back to the first century. Suppose that this original Shroud gradually starts to fade and crumble. Finally, suppose that in the thirteen hundreds, a brilliant artist is commissioned to make an exact copy, to preserve the image for another thousand years.”
“Suppose pigs can fly,” I said. “You’re right; that sounds farfetched. If there was an ancient, authentic, first-century Shroud that got copied in the thirteen hundreds, what happened to it? Wouldn’t somebody have saved it, even if it was in shreds? I can’t imagine commissioning a copy but trashing the original.”
“It’s a stretch, I grant you,” she conceded. “I came up with it as a way to mesh faith with facts—the radiocarbon dating, the presence of iron oxide in the image, the good condition of the linen. It worked, sort of, for a while. Before I floated that idea, none of the Shroudies would give me the time of day.”
“And after?”
“After, one of the Shroudie Web sites actually posted my article. Briefly. But I still got hate mail and threatening phone calls.”
“I admire your efforts to reconcile religion and science,” I said. “But I’m not convinced. Remember Occam’s razor?”
“How could I forget? You drummed it into our heads over and over. ‘The simplest explanation that fits the facts is usually correct,’ right?”
“Exactly. So what’s the simplest explanation for an image of Jesus that first surfaces in the Middle Ages—the heyday of fake relics—on fabric that C-14 labs tell us is fourteenth century? I can’t help thinking it’s a fake, created to attract pilgrims to Lirey, the French village where it appeared in 1357.”
“I know, fakery fits the facts.” She sighed. “And yeah, it’s a lot simpler than my scenario.”
“Can I circle back to something? You said you think you know who made the Shroud. Who?”
“Ah. My money’s on Giotto di Bondoni,” she said at once. “Brilliant artist. Crucial, crucial figure in the transition from medieval art to the Renaissance. Giotto’s people look real, three-dimensional, not flat and stylized like medieval icons. Late twelve hundreds, early thirteen hundreds, so the timing’s right. The style’s right, too.”
“How so?”
“One, the guy on the Shroud is long and thin, and Giotto’s figures tend to be long in the face and in the body. Two, religious art was his bread and butter, but Giotto himself was a skeptic. Three, he was a notorious prankster. Think about it: If you’re a religious artist and a religious skeptic, what would be the ultimate prank? How about faking the burial shroud of Jesus—and getting away with it? Be tough to top that, wouldn’t it?”
“But wait—if it’s a prank, doesn’t that contradict your autopsy-illustration theory?”
“I’m not head over heels in love with that theory. I offered it as an olive branch to the Shroudies. And they clubbed me over the head with it.”
“So if Giotto wasn’t copying an earlier Shroud—if he did it as a prank, or a fake, or whatever—then it’s not a likeness of Jesus, or of anybody, for that matter. He could just make up any old face, right? He wouldn’t have needed a human model.” I was asking for two reasons: I needed to lay my Avignon hypothesis to rest once and for all, and I was still intrigued by Miranda’s snuff-film theory—a theory that resembled Emily’s autopsy-photo idea, but with a sinister twist.
“Occam’s razor, Dr. B. Giotto was an artist. Artists use models. Of course there was a model.”
“But the guy in the painting—”
“It’s not a painting,” she interrupted. “It’s an illustration.”
“Okay, okay, the guy in the illustration: Would his dimensions, his stature, match the stature of the model?”