Does the Shroud of Turin show the “real face of Jesus”?”
LONDON: For the first time, computer artists claim to have recreated the face of Jesus Christ from the Shroud of Turin, using cutting-age digital technology. The image was created by taking information and blood encoded on the Shroud of Turin — the blood-stained linen that many believe was the burial cloth of crucified Jesus Christ — and transforming it into a 3D image, say the artists. The image was recreated for ‘History Channel’ special programme ‘The Real Face of Jesus’ to be aired this week. “We ‘lifted’ the blood and isolated it (on computer) so that it would sit ‘in air’ (on a transparent background),” the ‘Daily Mail’ quoted computer artist Ray Downing, President of Studio Macbeth, the group that created the image,as saying. He explained that because the Turin Shroud was wrapped around, rather than being draped on the body, the blood was transferred to the cloth as it was wound. Therefore it did not align with the places on the face from which it originated. The ancient shrou
LONDON: For the first time, computer artists claim to have recreated the face of Jesus Christ from the Shroud of Turin, using cutting-age digital technology. The image was created by taking information and blood encoded on the Shroud of Turin — the blood-stained linen that many believe was the burial cloth of crucified Jesus Christ — and transforming it into a 3D image, say the artists. The image was recreated for ‘History Channel’ special programme ‘The Real Face of Jesus’ to be aired this week. “We ‘lifted’ the blood and isolated it (on computer) so that it would sit ‘in air’ (on a transparent background),” the ‘Daily Mail’ quoted computer artist Ray Downing, President of Studio Macbeth, the group that created the image,as saying. He explained that because the Turin Shroud was wrapped around, rather than being draped on the body, the blood was transferred to the cloth as it was wound. Therefore it did not align with the places on the face from which it originated. The ancient shrou
Does the Shroud of Turin show the “real face of Jesus”? That claim is impossible to judge, even though it serves the title of a documentary about the 3-D analysis of the Shroud of Turin premiering tonight on the History Channel. What can be said is that the centuries-old image wasn’t just painted freehand. Computer analysis of the imprint on the shroud suggests that it had to be left behind by someone draped in cloth. “Is this the artifact of a real person or not? Definitely it is,” Ray Downing, the digital illustrator at the center of the show, told me today. Downing worked with specialists on the shroud to come up with a photorealistic representation of the man whose body’s imprint appears faintly on a famous 14-foot-long length of linen. For some Christians, the stain serves as the miraculous snapshot of their risen Lord. For most scientists, it is a cleverly done fake from the 13th or 14th century, but nothing more.
