Just in case you were wondering about the Machy mould being discussed in The Conspiracy of the Faux-Sweat Imprint, here is some more information. These images,above, are from Colin Berry’s blog (in fact we are looking at them there through something of a wormhole in the way you can structure things on the web).
Tell me: do you see the image on the left? Are HIS eyes open? Compare the face on the left to the image of a face elsewhere on the mold of someone holding the shroud.
- Also see, The Machy Version of the Lirey Pilgrim’s Badge: A Revised Reconstruction by Ian Wilson in the BSTS newsletter.
- And there is the The Two Lirey Badges: Unmistakable Differences, a posting on this blog with 90 comments.
It helps to see the size of this thing. Here is a picture of Alain Hourseau, the owner of the mold, holding it in his hands.
And finally here, below, is a good picture of the whole mold. Is that face from one of the Veronicas? Again, I ask: are the eyes open? Is this a case of I think I see too much?
Me thinks so! And does it really matter?
BTW: It was Colin back in February who wrote this healthy swipe:
That was in the mid-1350s, accompanied by at least two promotional pilgrims’ badges’ The first and better known lead/tin one in the Cluny museum, dredged up from the Seine in 1855, without any obvious Christ-like figure, and the (later?) revisionist version (see Ian Wilson’s pdf in the BSTS Newsletter on the Machy mould) that has the added Veronica- style in vivo motif of Christ’s face as an additional inset image above the word SUAIRE ( signalling a “sweat-imprinted face cloth” and no doubt attempting to suggest, even subliminally, that the entire Shroud image was likewise a sweat imprint, albeit post-mortem).
The surplus-to-requirements and source or confusion face and label on the Machy mould above “SUAIRE” (left) and just one several similar images that could have chosen to represent the Veil of Veronica, the one shown here described as a 14th century “copy” , entitled the ‘Holy Face of Jaen’.
What better way than piggybacking, seen with the addition of a motif of the famed pilgrim-attracting Veil of Veronica (Fr. Le voile de Véronique) with its alleged imprint of the face of Jesus en route to Calvary, imprinted we are told in sweat. Contrary view (or a prioriassumption): Mario Latendresse describes it as “the face of the man on the Shroud”.
