Shroud of Turin FAQ

In contemporary humans the ratio of the distance between the eyes and the top of the head and the distance between the eyes and the tip of the jaw (as seen from a frontal perspective) is roughly 1:1 - the eyes are roughly in the middle of the face. The Shroud of Turin, however, has a top/bottom of face ratio of roughly 0.75. Four possible explanations have been offered for this:

1. The imprinting process somehow skewed the perspective, such that the man's jaw, nose and mouth area seem larger and the forehead appears diminished.
2. Interpretation and measurement of the proportions of the image on the shroud may be imprecise.
3. The man had a cranial deformity considerably outside the norm of modern humans and the fossil record.
4. The shroud of Turin is a fake created by someone with only cursory knowledge of human facial anatomy. It should be noted that enlarging the lower part of the face and diminishing the forehead is a common error of inexperienced artists, as well as a distinguishing feature of medieval and early renaissance art.

This claim, though, is disputable: It is not clear that the top/bottom face ratio on the Shroud is roughly 0.75 since the end-points for the measurements are imprecise: the locations of the chin and the top of the head on the Shroud cannot be determined exactly. Which end-points were used to come up with the ratio 0.75? It can be shown, on a digital image of the Shroud, that some plausible measurements give a ratio of roughly 0.90. Using the online tool http://www.sindonology.org it is possible to report reproducible length measurements, unlike the previous unreproducible statements. The end-points (308,1248) and (308, 1379), plausible end-points from the top of the head to the chin, give a head height of 25.1 cm; the end-points (308, 1248) and (308, 1309), from the top of the head to the center of the eyes, give a length of 11.7 cm; which means that the length from the center of the eyes to the chin, based on these two measurements, is 13.4 cm. That is a ratio of 11.7/13.4=0.87. Moreover, the ratio 1:1 for human is also disputable. It is not always the same for every human face: a ratio of 0.90 is also acceptable for many human faces. For example, at the website "Example Face" (http://www2.evansville.edu/drawinglab/face.html) it is claimed that an artist should use a ratio of 1:1; but the example presented on that page has a ratio of 0.86 -- very similar to the Shroud.

6th century painting of Christ that lines up with shroud image detail for detail
 

 

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