Hat tip to John Klotz: There is a new book out by art historian Martin Kemp called Christ to Coke: How Image Becomes Icon ($22.71 for hardcover and $15.37 for Kindle at Amazon). It looks interesting. I have not had a chance to peruse it yet but have glanced at it on my laptop and iPhone: fantastic color photographs of many icons of Christ. Here is what the publisher, Oxford University Press has to say:
How does an image become iconic? In Christ to Coke, eminent art historian Martin Kemp offers a highly original look at the main types of visual icons. Lavishly illustrated with 165 color images, this marvelous work illuminates eleven universally recognized images, both historical and contemporary, to see how they arose and how they continue to function in our culture.
Kemp begins with the stock image of Christ’s face, the founding icon–literally, since he was the central subject of early Christian icons. Some of the icons that follow are general, like the cross, the lion, and the heart-shape (as in "I heart New York"). Some are specific, such as the Mona Lisa, Che Guevara, and the famous photograph of the napalmed girl in Vietnam. Other modern icons come from politics, such as the American flag (the "Stars and Stripes"), from business, led by the Coca-Cola bottle, and from science, most notably the double helix of DNA and Einstein’s famous equation E=mc2.
The Shroud is discussed. Kemp writes (I provide a longer quote below the ‘Read more’ fold):
Given the loud public debates. and the disappearance from view of the Vatican Veronica. the Turin Shroud is now the most famous of the αχειροποίητα. The fact that the image is far more apparent in a photographic negative than in the original has served to enhance its magical status. For the enthusiastic seeker of evidence, its elusiveness as a picture allows the viewer to see details that may not be there. It has occasioned its own recent pseudo-histories, often of such an extravagant and fanciful nature as to rival any medieval legend. Even Leonardo, as a proto-photographer, has been pressed into service as its forger.
If we are to look analytically at the image on the shroud as a picture (however it was made), it exhibits clear visual features that point to its painterly origins. The first thing to say is that it bears few of the physical characteristics needed for an imprint made by a cloth wrapped around a body. Even if the linen was initially laid flat on the corpse, it would have sunk softly around it, and any imprint would have registered aspects of the top and side of the head and some portion of the flanks of the whole body. The bony prominences of the hands, knees, and feet would have come into particularly direct contact with the cloth, but there is no evidence of their having done so. The attenuated proportions, stick-like nature of the folded arms and straight legs, and the long, thin, unmodelled fingers are all consistent with both medieval and Byzantine figure styles, just as the existing Holy Faces all betray their Byzantine origins. If I were asked to provide an art-historical date for the portrayal of Christ on the Shroud, I would estimate it have been made in the later thirteenth or first half of the fourteenth century in Italy or southern France. This is consistent with the much denigrated carbon dating. The other possibility is that it is of Byzantine manufacture. Were the various bodies of evidence ever to converge consistently on a date in the first century AD there will still be a lot of visual explaining to do. It seems to me to be evidently made by hand.
More complete quote from Christ to Coke:
The long linen sheet. bearing ghostly images of the front and back of a recumbent man, has been the subject of dispute from the time of its discovery. Its first documented appearance was at Lirey in France in the 1350s, when the Lord of Savoy founded a collegiate church for its veneration. In 1389 the Bishop of Troyes. Pierre d’Arcis, petitioned Pope Clement VII in Avignon to declare that the Shroud was a false relic. He cited his predecessor. Henri de Poitiers, who ‘eventually, after diligent inquiry and examination’, discovered how the ‘said cloth had been cunningly painted, the truth being attested by the artist who had painted it. To wit, that it was a work of human skill and nor miraculously wrought or bestowed’. Nevertheless, it attracted a fervent following. Via the House of Savoy, the Shroud moved to Turin in 1578, where it has since remained.
Ian Wilson, one of’ the most fervent advocates of the antiquity of the shroud, proposes that it is the long-lost Mandylion. A full body image would not correspond to the early legend, bur early descriptions refer to it as an ‘image’ and can be reconciled with the idea that the Shroud was once folded (as we can see it was) and mounted in such a way that only the head and shoulders were visible. In this case, it is strange that it was not explicitly identified as the shroud from the outset. The fractured histories of both the Mandylion and Shroud leave huge gaps to be bridged. and the mystery certainly has not been ‘solved’, as the subtitle of Wilson’s latest book proclaims.
Given the loud public debates. and the disappearance from view of the Vatican Veronica. the Turin Shroud is now the most famous of the αχειροποίητα. The fact that the image is far more apparent in a photographic negative than in the original has served to enhance its magical status. For the enthusiastic seeker of evidence, its elusiveness as a picture allows the viewer to see details that may not be there. It has occasioned its own recent pseudo-histories, often of such an extravagant and fanciful nature as to rival any medieval legend. Even Leonardo, as a proto-photographer, has been pressed into service as its forger.
If we are to look analytically at the image on the shroud as a picture (however it was made), it exhibits clear visual features that point to its painterly origins. The first thing to say is that it bears few of the physical characteristics needed for an imprint made by a cloth wrapped around a body. Even if the linen was initially laid flat on the corpse, it would have sunk softly around it, and any imprint would have registered aspects of the top and side of the head and some portion of the flanks of the whole body. The bony prominences of the hands, knees, and feet would have come into particularly direct contact with the cloth, but there is no evidence of their having done so. The attenuated proportions, stick-like nature of the folded arms and straight legs, and the long, thin, unmodelled fingers are all consistent with both medieval and Byzantine figure styles, just as the existing Holy Faces all betray their Byzantine origins. If I were asked to provide an art-historical date for the portrayal of Christ on the Shroud, I would estimate it have been made in the later thirteenth or first half of the fourteenth century in Italy or southern France. This is consistent with the much denigrated carbon dating. The other possibility is that it is of Byzantine manufacture. Were the various bodies of evidence ever to converge consistently on a date in the first century AD there will still be a lot of visual explaining to do. It seems to me to be evidently made by hand.
One visual advantage the shroud does possess for believers is that it exhibits the same kind of archaic other-worldliness as the earlier images said to be made by no hand. The face is a rather unlovely version of the stock physiognomy. manifesting the severity of the medieval Pantokrator rather than the human gentility of the Renaissance Salvador mundi. We have already noted that the archaic images generally do a better job for the pious worshipper than very naturalistic representations. when the French twentieth-century expressionist painter Georges Rouault strove for a style that expressed his piety and rejection of material values he turned not to the Renaissance but to the more primitive styles of the Middle Ages and Byzantium. His Christ in Cleveland picks up many of the physiognomic traits of the traditional Holy Faces, not least in its large. strongly outlined eyes. and it openly evokes the colours of stained glass (Fig. 1.14). However. Rouault’s Christ does not quite look at us.
Modern images of Jesus available in apparently unlimited numbers over the internet tend uneasily to combine the symmetrical physiognomy sanctioned by long tradition with a Hollywood soft-focus-effect, typically used for female film stars in the pre-digital era. The emotional connotations of the modern confections lean to the potential sweetness of the Salvador mundi rather than the stern ruler guise of the Panrokrator.
I feel the love.
I’m a bit confused as to Martin Kemp’s (and others) attribution of the style to Byzantine or Medieval, as I cant think of a single example of a painting in either style that do not have strong linear outlines (unlike the Shroud appears to have no such outline anywhere I can detect). Perhaps Martin Kemp’s attribution of the style is due to the thin limbs etc. but surely that is more an artifact of there being no outline, so it being hard to determine how fat are the limbs.
Don’t you forget Kemp’s book was published by OXFORD University Press. In the recent Shroud history, doesn’t the word OXFORD ring a bell?
Max, Well I’m not completely won over by conspiracies of thought brought about by being in one institution or another but being a graduate of the other institution, I’m willing to believe anything of Oxford Uni (joking!).
But seriously, having a physics background, I tend to believe the C14 normally correctly dates a sample … but I’m stumped as to why the various labs arent scratching their heads when the Hungarian Pray Manuscript (1195) tells them that something must have gone wrong in that date ie that perhaps they have correctly dated an unrepresentative bit of cloth, either that or the Pray Manuscript is incorrectly dated. The Pray Manuscript also blows a hole in the story quoted by Martin Kemp about Henri de Poitiers attesting (<1389) to having met the artist who created the shroud as the artist would have to be close to two hundred years old to still be alive. A proper scientist or art historian would try to sort out this extreme contradiction, and not just stick their head in the sand.
But what I find disappointing about Martin Kemp's remarks (bearing in mind that Martin Kemp wrote excellent books about optics and art techniques and collaborated with David Hockney with investigating the possible and speculative use of the camera obscura in shaping art history) dismissing the object as being of painterly origins "however it was made". For an art historian, who has specialized in trying to work out how various paintings were created, to add those last dismissive words to an object that defies proper explanation by even the most ardent skeptics is a bit lame. Maybe that wasnt necessarily his intent ie to dismiss it, but perhaps he should have at least noted that of all the pictorial objects of virtually any era, it is the most baffling (and I say that without necessarily going along with the religious element). The Shroud of Turin stands out of the normal cannon of representational art, there is simply nothing that comes remotely close …and that should set art historians alive with excitement and not to just give the party line that it must be of painterly origin.
ArtScience you wrote: “Max, Well I’m not completely won over by conspiracies of thought brought about by being in one institution or another.”
The fact is I don’t believe in any conspiracy of thought at all. I just think Kemp’s university background and prejudices cloud his view since the Oxford university lab carbondated the Shroud.
Well, Max, thinking about it, you do have a point…if I were associated with a particular university and I heard that our guys down the road in such and such department proved this or that, I’d tend to give it more weight than otherwise, particularly if its a reputable university. We also know that most institutions, even reputable institutions can be hard to change their minds or even open their minds to the possibility that they might have gone wrong somewhere….way too embarrassing. To me it seems clear that earlier references to the Shroud, particularly the illustration in the Prayer Manuscript, shows Oxford, Arizona, and Zurich are right to attribute the date band to the samples they were given but wrong in attributing the date band that they did to the entire shroud, unless those dastardly cunning medieval minds also invented a time machine as well. As a physicist, I’d say the problem lies in finding a mechanism that would explain the discrepancy. That is really hard to do without further testing, so Turin would have to be more flexible there to resolve this.
ArtScience, in order to reach some valid opinion, one should not forget that BOTH field and lab archaeologies shall not be at variance but go hand in hand. To carbondate an arterfact means not much in se. Its archaeological context or/and conversation history shall be taKing into account for the measure to be accepted or rejected as such. The 1988 carbondating test dramatically failed in this respect.
Typo error: you should read “taken” instead of “taking”.
Oxford is as Oxford Does.
I have recently read the original Paul Vignon book on the Shroud originally published in 1902 which was reissued in English in 2002. I got it through Amazon. In 1902, more than three decades before he published his “Vignon Markings” he compared medieval depictions of Christ and found them inferior to the Shroud image and quite different.
I was originally attracted to Christ to Coke because its author Martin Kemp was the leading art historian backing the DaVinci origination of what he dubbed “La Principessa” an art scandal par excellence when Christie evaluated a 100 million dollar drawing for $17,000 and sold it on consignment. See National Geographic Feb 2012, p. 101
Kudos to Martin Kemp for “La Principessa.” Really! Bronx cheer for “Christ to Coke!!”
His opinion is ignorant and a disgrace for an expert. I say “ignorant” because he obviously didn’t do his homework on the Shroud. He cites Pantocrator as the ultimate Christ icon and ignores or does not know about the well publicized Vignon markings linking to the Shroud image to the Pantocrator. He is dismissive of Ian Wilson’s “Mandylion theory,” and list Wilson’s latest book as “Reading” as well as the entire Shroud.com cite.(Kindle Edition location 1005). He ignores the Vignon markings even though they are discussed in the book he lists as “Reading.” (Kemp, Martin [2011-10-13]. Christ to Coke : How Image Becomes Icon, Figure 26, Kindle Edition location 2680)
And he sort of grouses about the carbon dating controversy and then swallows it whole hog. His attribution of it to the Medieval/Renaisance times as a painting by an unknown Italian or French artists is – GIVEN THE EVIDENCE – absurd.
“If I were asked to provide an art-historical date for the portrayal of Christ on the Shroud, I would estimate it have been made in the later thirteenth or first half of the fourteenth century in Italy or southern France. This is consistent with the much denigrated carbon dating.” (Kemp: Kindle Locations 954-956).
It is not a painting. If anything, what Barrie Schwortz has estimated to be more than a quarter of a million hours of Shroud research has demonstrated that.
However, I have a working theory or an opinion about Mr. Kemp’s astute blindness. One of the bases of his LaPrincipessa opinion is carbon dating that was done on its vellum which dated it to DaVinci’s time. Is it possible that Oxford Don Kemp used Oxford’s very own carbon dating lab to do the dating? If so, is his attack on the Shroud authenticity occasioned by a necessity to, at least indirectly, defend the Oxford carbon dating lab?
Perhaps the good Professor could enlighten us on who did his carbon dating? Just asking. Were we in court and he was testifying as an expert on the Shroud, it would be an admissible question on cross-examination. It’s called bias.
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