Archive
Fra Giovanni Angelico’s ‘Lamentation’ to be Displayed with the Shroud
The Italian News Agency, Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata (ANSA) is reporting, in its English syndication feed that Beato Angelico’s ‘Lamentation’ is to be displayed with the Turin Shroud:
The recently restored Lamentation, depicting weeping mourners wrapping Christ’s body in the Shroud, has been loaned by the Museum of San Marco in Florence to enhance visitors’ experience in Turin.
The painting, which had been damaged by rain when a tornado hit Florence last September, will be displayed from Thursday through June 30.
A special mobile app through Google Play or Apple, offers viewers an audio guide narrated by Timothy Verdon, director of the Duomo museum in Florence, illuminates the panel which was painted between 1441 and 1442.
Experts suggest that Fra Angelico likely saw the Turin shroud before he painted the Lamentation panel, with the result an intense rendering of the moments after Christ’s crucifixion.
Click on the above image. I have provided a 3200 bit wide copy of a photograph of the painting.
Is the Shroud real? Probably.
The Shroud of Turin may be the real burial cloth of Jesus. The carbon dating, once seemingly proving it was a medieval fake, is now widely thought of as suspect and meaningless. Even the famous Atheist Richard Dawkins admits it is controversial. Christopher Ramsey, the director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Laboratory, thinks more testing is needed. So do many other scientists and archeologists. This is because there are significant scientific and non-religious reasons to doubt the validity of the tests. Chemical analysis, all nicely peer-reviewed in scientific journals and subsequently confirmed by numerous chemists, shows that samples tested are chemically unlike the whole cloth. It was probably a mixture of older threads and newer threads woven into the cloth as part of a medieval repair. Recent robust statistical studies add weight to this theory. Philip Ball, the former physical science editor for Nature when the carbon dating results were published, recently wrote: “It’s fair to say that, despite the seemingly definitive tests in 1988, the status of the Shroud of Turin is murkier than ever.” If we wish to be scientific we must admit we do not know how old the cloth is. But if the newer thread is about half of what was tested – and some evidence suggests that – it is possible that the cloth is from the time of Christ.
No one has a good idea how front and back images of a crucified man came to be on the cloth. Yes, it is possible to create images that look similar. But no one has created images that match the chemistry, peculiar superficiality and profoundly mysterious three-dimensional information content of the images on the Shroud. Again, this is all published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
We simply do not have enough reliable information to arrive at a scientifically rigorous conclusion. Years ago, as a skeptic of the Shroud, I came to realize that while I might believe it was a fake, I could not know so from the facts. Now, as someone who believes it is the real burial shroud of Jesus of Nazareth, I similarly realize that a leap of faith over unanswered questions is essential.
My name is Dan Porter. Please email me at DanielRobertPorter@gmail.com
Recent Comments