February 5, 1903 



NA TURE 



3 l 7 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



[The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions ex- 

 pressed by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake 

 to return, or to correspond with the writers of, rejected 

 manuscripts intended for this or any other part of Nature. 

 No notice is taken of anonymous communications.] 



The Holy Shroui of Turin. 



While thoroughly agreeing with Prof. Meldola's remarks 

 regarding Dr. Paul Vignon's elude scientifique of the remark- 

 able relic known as the Holy Shroud, reviewed at p. 241 

 of the current volume, there are a few points which he has 

 not enlarged upon, but which may possibly deserve attention 

 and show how largely imaginary and unsupported by the records 

 Dr. Vignon's theory is. No valid determination of the nature 

 of the impressions or of the manner in which they have been 

 produced can, of course, be made without a critical examin- 

 ation of the relic itself, so that any arguments based upon mere 

 assumptions must be purely hypothetical. 



First, as regards the possibility of the negative impressions 

 being produced by painting or some analogous method. Dr. 

 Vignon rejects this absolutely on the ground that no one in 

 the Middle Ages had the knowledge for producing them by 

 handicraft, the difficulty of producing a negative picture pic- 

 torially or of painting on linen with gum or albumen as media 

 without the colour flaking off, while the linen is too supple to 

 have been painted in oil. If he had consulted the early treatises 

 on painting, some of them dating from long before the 

 fourteenth century and handing down processes derived from 

 ancient Greek art, he would have found descriptions of methods 

 of tracing and transferring pictures which might have modified 

 his opinion. For instance, in Didron's "Manuel d'lcono- 

 graphie Chretienne," which contains a translation of a treatise 

 on painting founded on the teaching of the twelfth-century 

 painter Manuel Panselinos, of Thessalonica, we find (p. 15) 

 that the practice of making tracings from pictures for copying 

 purposes was common, and again (p. 17), the opening chapter 

 of the treatise is devoted to this subject, and a method is 

 described of taking a coloured transfer impression on paper 

 from any kind of painting, whether on oiled paper, panel or 

 fresco. It was sufficient to paint in the general outlines, 

 the rest being filled in afterwards. This, at any rate, shows 

 that the early painters of the Middle Ages had sufficient 

 knowledge of technique to produce reveised impressions from 

 paintings, and it seems not unlikely that the impressions 

 on the Turin relic were produced by some method of this 

 kind from an original positive painting. Various traditional 

 methods of tracing pictures may be found in Mrs. Herringham's 

 recent translation of Cenneno Cennini's " Trattato della 

 Pittura" (1437) and in Mrs. Merrifield's collection of 

 " Original Treatises dating from the Twelfth to the Eighteenth 

 Centuries on the Arts of Painting." In the latter work, we 

 also find mention of myrrh and aloes being used as ingredients 

 in oil or spirit varnishes and lacquers, while aloes seems to have 

 been used alone as a yellow glazing pigment analogous to our 

 "brown pink." Caballine aloes is recommended by Leonardo 

 da Vinci for improving the colour of verdigris or for use by 

 itself. Should aloes be actually present in the impressions on 

 the relic, as Dr. Vignon believes, though there is no evidence of 

 it, the fact of its being used in the above manner may offer an 

 explanation. In the above treatises also, there are several 

 references to methods of painting on linen with yolk of egg, 

 thin size and other media in such a way that the cloth would 

 bear folding without injury to the colours or gilding, so that this 

 objection disappears. Chiffiet (p. 198) mentions the use of a 

 spirituous tincture of cloves and cinnamon in depicting 

 Phillip II. of Spain in his shroud (lintcs). 



A far more important point against his theory, which has 

 been quite overlooked by Dr. Vignon, is that the best 

 modern authorities seem to be agreed that the " aloes " 

 mentioned in the Bible is not to be confounded with the 

 ordinary medicinal drug, but is the perfume known as 

 " lign-aloes " (Hebrew, Ahalim), or the resinous wood of 

 Aquilaria Agallocha, which grows in India and other parts of 

 the East (Hanbury, " Scient. Papers," p. 263). The better 

 qualities of this wood have a fine perfume when shredded, and 

 it seems to have been used in that state mixed with myrrh and 

 spices. It is mentioned by J. B. Porta in the Magia Naturalis 

 as a perfume. Pingone, in his history of this relic (" Sindon 



NO. I736, VOL. 67] 



Evangelica," p. 22), in a hymn dated 1562, alludes to myrrh and 

 fragrant aloes brought from India and Arabia, the former being 

 an essentially Arabian product. If this or a similar resinous per- 

 fume is really referred to by St. John, the only evangelist who 

 mentions aloes, Dr. Vignon's theory at once falls to the ground, 

 because he distinctly alludes to the drug which contains aloin 

 and aloetin and is darkened by the action of ammonia, while, so 

 far as I have been able to ascertain from specimens of the wood 

 and resin 01 Aquilaria Agallocha, from Assam, ammonia pro- 

 duces only a very slight coloration of their tinctures or of linen 

 soaked in them ; and as either the wood or the resin would no 

 doubt have been used in the dry state, any slight darkening of 

 their solutions by ammonia would not affect the question of 

 production of the images on the relic. Dr. Vignon assumes 

 that the myrrh and aloes were mixed with olive oil, but there is 

 nothing in the sacred records to that effect. If any such oily 

 mixture were used, the relic could not fail to still bear traces of 

 it and be strongly discoloured all over, regarding which nothing 

 is said by those who have seen it, nor is it so shown in the 

 photographs. 



We now come to the " vaporographic " images, and it must be 

 distinctly noted that while putting forward this theory as 

 absolutely explaining and authenticating the impressions on the 

 relic, Dr. Vignon has produced no shred of definite proof in 

 support of it beyond the very partial success of a rough experi- 

 ment with a plaster of Paris cast moistened with ammonium 

 carbonate, and two failures, together with the opinions of certain 

 eminent physiologists as to the possible decomposition of the 

 excess of urea present in morbid sweats producing am- 

 moniacal fumes, by the action of which on the aloes in the linen 

 he claims that such impressions could have been produced in 

 gradation according to the law of distances. 



I have made several experiments on the lines indicated by 

 Dr. Vignon with moulded figures made of flour paste and 

 gelatine mixed with dilute solution of ammonia, so as to act on 

 fine linen cloths soaked in various preparations of Barbadoes, or, 

 by preference, Socotrine aloes, but in no case have I been able 

 to obtain the semblance of a clearly shaded image, of parts close 

 to the cloth or within the limit of distance of I cm. given by 

 Dr. Vignon. There has always been diffusion, as must neces- 

 sarily occur by the accumulation of vapour under the cloth, and 

 an entire absence of any delineation, though in some cases there 

 has been an increased darkening of the cloth immediately above 

 the highest parts of the object. If this is the case with dilute 

 ammonia, it is not likely to be otherwise with any product of 

 the decomposition of urea from morbid secretions, but this is 

 a question for pathologists. The most sensitive surface tried 

 was prepared with a mixture of myrrh and Socotiine aloes 

 rubbed up with cedar-wood oil — the latter substance being 

 sometimes used in funeral ceremonies in the East. On one 

 cloth prepared in this way, there is just an indication of a face, 

 which was very roughly moulded in flour paste mixed with 

 ammonia, and a certain amount of vaporographic action, but 

 with no gradation or detail as is shown in the photographs of 

 the relic. 



So far as my experiments have gone, I feel almost convinced 

 that if a body were wrapped or wound in a linen cloth, under 

 the conditions stated in all the Gospels, it would be absolutely 

 impossible for such a detailed impression as that shown on the 

 relic to be produced in the manner suggested by Dr. Vignon, 

 even supposing that medicinal aloes were used, as they some- 

 times were, like colocynth among the Egyptians, as a preventive 

 against vermin. Bearing in mind, however, the bad record of 

 the relic, remarkable as it is as a work of art, and the fact that 

 it is not considered authentic by the authorities most qualified 

 to judge, any further discussion of Dr. Vignon's theory seems 

 of little importance apart from the possibility of " vaporographic 

 portraits" being produced in the manner he has indicated, but 

 by no means substantiated. 



It is, I think, greatly to be regretted that Dr. Vignon should 

 have brought forward his theory with such an array of quasi- 

 scientific authority and argument based on so very slender a 

 foundation. J. Waterhouse, Maj. -General LA. 



January 23. 



The accompanying outline is a reduced photographic repro- 

 duction of my tracing from Signor Secondo Pia's positive photo- 

 graph of the Holy Shroud, as referred to by Prof. Mcldola 

 (Nature, pp. 241-243), and a glance at it is sufficient to 

 show that the original is an inferior (much faded) mediaeval. 



