The Shroud of Turin · Chapter 17 of 21
Faces through the centuries: the Pantocrator, the coins and the Pray Codex
Viewers who look at the face on the Shroud for the first time often see in it a familiar face, the face of Christ as it appears in Byzantine icons and in Western painting. That familiarity has been used as an argument in two directions. Some have argued that the Shroud image could only have been made by someone who knew the Byzantine icon tradition well, and that the Shroud is therefore a medieval product. Others have argued that the icons were modelled on the Shroud, or on a similar cloth, and that the resemblance is evidence of an earlier source. This chapter sets out the main comparisons: the Christ Pantocrator of Saint Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai, the solidus of Justinian II and the bronze coins that followed it, and the Hungarian Pray Codex of about 1192 to 1195, whose burial scene has been compared with the cloth. It also sets out the method by which such comparisons are made, and the questions they leave open.
Why the face matters in the argument
The face is the most visible part of the Shroud image, and it is the part that viewers most readily compare with other images. A face can be measured by its proportions, its features and its lighting, and it can be compared with other faces by the same measures. The comparison is attractive because it seems objective, and because it gives a way of testing the claim that the image is related to a particular tradition. It is also difficult, because the measures depend on choices, and because faces in art are often stylised. The series treats face comparisons as a useful but limited tool.
The face on the Shroud is also the part most affected by the forensic and reconstruction work described in Chapters 6 and 7. The relief of the face has been computed from the image, and the computed face has been compared with artistic faces. The comparison of the computed face with a painted face therefore involves two sources of difference: the difference between the cloth and the painting, and the difference between the cloth and the reconstruction. The reader should keep both differences in view.
The Sinai Pantocrator
The Christ Pantocrator of Saint Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai is one of the oldest surviving icons of Christ. It is an encaustic painting on panel, made in the sixth or seventh century, and it shows Christ with a long face, a high forehead, a divided beard, and a steady gaze. The icon is one of the most studied works of early Byzantine art, and its features are often used as the reference for the Byzantine type of Christ.1
The Pantocrator is cited in the Shroud literature because some of its features resemble the features of the Shroud face. The forehead, the nose and the hair have been compared, and some researchers have reported correspondences among a set of landmarks. The argument is that the Byzantine painter was working from a model with the same proportions as the Shroud face, and that the model may have been the Shroud or a similar cloth. The argument is not established. The Pantocrator was painted in a period when many icons of Christ were made, and the type was shaped by iconographic convention as well as by any model.
The comparison method
The method used to compare the Pantocrator and the Shroud face has several steps. The first is to choose a set of landmarks on each face. The second is to measure the distances between the landmarks, or the angles between them, and to express the measurements as ratios. The third is to compare the ratios and to report the agreement. The method depends on the choice of landmarks, and different landmarks give different results. A reader who sees a claim of agreement should ask which landmarks were used, why they were chosen, and whether the result survives a change in the set.
The method also depends on the quality of the images. The Shroud face is a photographic record of a cloth that has been darkened and distorted by time, and the Pantocrator is a painting with its own surface damage and repainting. The landmarks in each must be located with care, and the errors in locating them can be as large as the differences being measured. The series treats the comparisons as sensitive to these errors.
The argument for the Pantocrator model
The argument that the Pantocrator was modelled on the Shroud rests on several points. The face of the icon has features that are close to the Shroud face in several landmarks. The icon’s date is within the period in which the Mandylion was venerated, and the icon may reflect the image of Edessa. The painter may have had access to a cloth with the image, or to a copy of it. The argument is consistent, and it has been developed by several writers.
The argument against the Pantocrator model
The argument against is that the Pantocrator follows a well-established Byzantine type, which was developed over centuries and was not derived from a single image. The features of the type, including the long face and the high forehead, appear in other icons of the period and in later works. The resemblance to the Shroud can be explained by the common type, without assuming a direct model. The argument is also that the comparisons depend on the choice of landmarks, and that a different set could show less agreement.
The Justinian II solidus, 692
The Byzantine emperor Justinian II, who ruled from 685 to 695 and again from 705 to 711, issued a gold coin in 692 that bore the image of Christ on one face. The coin was a solidus, the standard gold coin of the empire, and the image of Christ on it was a new development in the imperial coinage. A scholarly hypothesis links the coin to a dispute with the Caliph Abd al-Malik, who had been issuing Byzantine-style gold with an Islamic inscription. The link is not established. The coin’s iconography is one of the earliest surviving images of Christ on a coin.2
The Justinian coin shows a bust of Christ with a long face, a divided beard and a tuft of hair on the forehead. The face has been compared with the Shroud face, and some writers have argued that the coin reflects an image of the Shroud type. The comparison has been made frequently in the literature, and the resemblance has been noted in several features. The reader should note that the coin was struck as a public object, and that its design followed the imperial programme.
The coinage and the transmission of the image
The coinage of the period had a wide circulation, and coins carried images across the Mediterranean and into Western Europe. The Justinian coin was one of the first to carry the image of Christ, and its design was copied in later coins. The transmission of the design to the West is documented in the numismatic record, and some writers have argued that the Justinian design influenced the Western image of Christ. The argument is that a Western artist who saw a coin could have derived the type of the face from it.
The transmission is plausible, but its extent is uncertain. Coins are small and their designs are simplified, and an artist who saw a coin would have had to enlarge and interpret the image. The argument that the Justinian coin shaped the Western face of Christ is a claim about influence, and it is not proved by the similarity of the designs.
The later Byzantine bronze coins
The Byzantine coinage of the tenth century included bronze folles that bore an image of Christ Pantocrator. The bronze coins show a bust of Christ with a book or a gospel in one hand and the other hand raised in blessing. The face has been compared with the Shroud face in some studies, and the comparisons have been made for the features of the forehead and the nose. The bronze coins are later than the Justinian solidus, and they show the development of the type.
The bronze coin comparisons are weaker than the solidus comparison, because the coins are smaller and more worn, and because the design changed over time. The reader should note that the comparison depends on the survival and the condition of the individual coins, and that the coins in the surviving collections vary.
The mint and the chronology of the design
The chronology of the Byzantine coinage is important for the argument. The Justinian coin of 692 is the first to carry Christ, and the coins that followed show changes in the design. The chronology is established by the numismatic record, which dates the coins by their types and their finds. The chronology gives a sequence of designs, and the sequence shows how the image of Christ changed. The Shroud comparison can be placed within that sequence, and the reader can ask whether the Shroud face is closer to the earlier or the later designs.
The Hungarian Pray Codex
The Pray Codex, named after the Hungarian Jesuit George Pray who studied it in the eighteenth century, is a manuscript now kept in Budapest. It was made about 1192 to 1195, and it contains a series of illuminations of the Passion and of other biblical scenes. One of the illuminations shows the body of Christ laid on a stone slab, with a linen cloth beneath him, and his hands crossed over the pelvis. The arrangement has been compared with the Shroud, and the comparison has been a focus of the Shroud literature for many years.3
The Pray illumination shows features that have been read as parallels to the Shroud. The cloth is shown with L-shaped marks along its edge, which have been compared with the stitching marks on the Shroud. The body is shown with the hands crossed, and the wounds of the hands and feet are shown in a way that some have read as consistent with the Shroud. The comparison is detailed, and it has been used to argue that the Shroud image was known in Hungary in the twelfth century.
The Pray comparison and its difficulties
The Pray comparison has been criticised on several grounds. The first is that the illumination is a stylised image, and its details, including the marks on the cloth and the position of the hands, may follow a convention. The second is that the L-shaped marks on the Pray cloth are not the same as the stitching marks on the Shroud, and that the resemblance may be less close than claimed. The third is that the date of the Pray Codex is later than the Edessa and the Constantinople sources, so that it cannot be the earliest record of the Shroud.
The Pray comparison is useful because it shows a Western image that engages with a burial cloth at an early date. It does not show that the cloth was the Shroud, and it does not show that the artist saw the Shroud. The comparison shows that the Shroud’s features were part of a broader pattern of Passion imagery, and that the pattern is hard to separate from the Shroud itself.
What the comparisons show
The comparisons show that the image of Christ in Byzantine and Western art shared features with the Shroud face and the Shroud burial, and that the features were part of a common tradition. The comparisons show that a painter who knew the tradition could produce an image with similar features, and that the tradition may have been shaped in part by a model like the Shroud. They do not show which came first, and they do not show that the Shroud was the model for the tradition.
What the comparisons cannot show
The comparisons cannot date the Shroud. They cannot identify the man in the image. They cannot show that the artists saw the Shroud, because the artists’ sources are not known. They cannot settle whether the resemblance is evidence of the cloth’s age, or of the icon’s dependence on a common type. And they cannot show that the Shroud image was made by a process that a medieval artist could or could not have used.
Testing the comparisons
The comparisons can be tested by several means. A first test is to choose the landmarks in advance, and to report the results for all of them, including those that do not agree. A second is to compare the Shroud with a control set of images from the same period, to see whether the agreement is special to the Shroud. A third is to date the icons and coins more precisely, and to test whether the resemblance grows or shrinks with the date. A fourth is to examine the Pray illumination in the original manuscript, and to check the marks and the stitching against the Shroud at the same level of detail.
Each test has a condition of failure. A comparison that depended on one landmark, or that disappeared when a control set was added, would be weak. A comparison that held across several landmarks and several control sets would be stronger. The series asks its readers to hold the comparisons to these standards.
The face and the tradition
The face of Christ in the tradition was shaped by many hands and many periods. The Sinai Pantocrator, the Justinian solidus and the Pray illumination are three points in a long development, and the Shroud face is compared with each. The comparisons have value because they place the Shroud in the history of images, and because they show what the tradition valued in the face. They do not decide the question of the Shroud’s origin.
The Vignon markings
In 1902 the French biologist Paul Vignon published a study of the Shroud in which he argued that the image contained a set of features that were characteristic of Byzantine art. He called them the Vignon markings, and he listed several: a particular treatment of the hair, a stylised rendering of the hands and the fingers, a shape of the nose, and a set of lines in the drapery of the cloth. Vignon argued that these features were consistent with a painted origin in the Byzantine tradition, and he used them to argue that the Shroud was an artefact of the period.4
Vignon’s argument has been widely discussed. Supporters of the Shroud’s authenticity have argued that the markings are not stylised in the way Vignon claimed, and that the features are the result of the image formation process. Critics have argued that the markings are not specific enough to identify a single tradition, and that Vignon’s list was selected to fit the Byzantine style. The argument illustrates a general problem of the comparisons: a list of features can always be found that resembles some tradition, and the resemblance must be tested against the alternatives.
The photograph of 1898 and the face
The photograph of the Shroud taken by Secondo Pia in 1898, discussed in Chapter 5, showed the face as a negative with a clear pattern. The negative was the first image of the face that most viewers saw in its full form, and it was the photograph that led many to see the Shroud as a face of a particular kind. The comparisons with the Byzantine icons were developed in the years after the photograph, when the negative was widely circulated.
The photograph therefore shaped the comparisons. Viewers who saw the negative compared it with the icons, and the comparisons were influenced by the way the negative showed the face. A reader who compares the Shroud with an icon should ask whether the comparison is made from the photograph, the negative, the cloth, or a reconstruction, and whether the chosen image changes the result.
Western Passion imagery
The Passion imagery of the Western Middle Ages developed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and it became more intense in its treatment of the body of Christ. The images show the wounds in greater detail, and the body is shown with more physical suffering. The development is often linked with the growth of devotion to the wounds of Christ, and with the influence of mystical writers who encouraged meditation on the physical Passion.
The Shroud’s image has been compared with this Western imagery, and some writers have argued that the Shroud was a source for the development. The argument is that a cloth with a clear image of a wounded body would have encouraged the realistic treatment of the Passion. The reverse argument is that the realistic imagery developed for its own reasons, and that the Shroud is a product of the same devotional climate. Both arguments are plausible, and the evidence does not decide between them.
The artist’s model
The question of whether the Shroud image could have been made by a medieval artist depends in part on what models the artist had. An artist could work from a live model, from a drawing, from a previous image, or from the imagination guided by a tradition. The Shroud comparisons assume that the artist used an image as a model, and that the model was the Byzantine icon or the Shroud itself. Neither assumption is proved.
The artist’s model is also a question of skill. A medieval artist could paint a face with great accuracy, and the Pray illumination and other works show a high level of technical ability. The Shroud’s image, however, has features that are difficult to achieve by painting, including the uniform contact with the cloth and the absence of brush marks. The argument from skill therefore cuts both ways, and the reader should not assume that a painter could not have made the image, or that a painter could easily have done so.
The Byzantine proportions
The Byzantine icon tradition followed rules of proportion that were transmitted through workshops and manuals. The rules gave the relative size of the forehead, the eyes, the nose and the mouth, and they gave the shape of the face. The painter who followed the rules would produce a face with the characteristic Byzantine proportions, and the Shroud face has proportions that some writers have read as consistent with the rules. The argument is that the Shroud face fits the tradition, and the tradition was used by the painter.
The proportions of the Shroud face are also consistent with a real human face, and the forensic reconstructions of the face have produced a range of proportions. The question is therefore whether the Shroud face fits the Byzantine rules better than a natural face. The answer depends on the landmarks chosen and on the reconstruction used, and the series treats the answer as provisional.
The argument from the Sinai icon, reconsidered
The Sinai Pantocrator is one of the few early icons whose date is secure, and it is the most important point of reference for the Byzantine face of Christ. If the Shroud face was known in the sixth or seventh century, the icon would be the place to look for its influence, and the comparisons have been made for that reason. The reader should note that the icon’s date is secure, and that its relation to the Shroud depends on the sequence of the image’s known history, which is uncertain.
Icon workshops and the transmission of faces
Byzantine icons were produced in workshops, and the workshops passed on patterns and models from one generation to the next. A workshop kept sketches, drawings and copies of earlier icons, and a painter would draw on them when making a new panel. The transmission of the face of Christ would therefore have followed the lines of the workshop, and the faces of different icons would show family resemblances. The Sinai Pantocrator is one example of a type that was copied and adapted, and its features are found in other icons of the same and later periods.
The workshop model helps explain the resemblance between the Shroud face and the icons without assuming a direct model. If the face of the Shroud was known to a workshop, its features could have passed into the pattern book. If it was not, the resemblance could come from a shared type. The model is consistent with both possibilities, and the historian must look for evidence of a particular transmission rather than assume one.
Medieval copies of the image
The Shroud image was copied in the medieval period, and several painted and drawn copies survive. The copies vary in their accuracy and in their details. Some follow the image closely, and others show a face that is more idealised. The copies are important because they show how the image was understood by those who saw it, and because they show how it was transmitted. The reader should note that the copies are not the Shroud, and that their accuracy depends on the artist and the date.
The copies also raise a question. If a copy shows a feature that the Shroud does not show, the feature must have been added by the copyist or derived from a different source. If the copy shows a feature that the Shroud shows but that later photographs do not, the copy may be a record of the cloth in an earlier state. Both possibilities are used in the literature, and each requires careful testing against the original.
The image in Christian art after 1500
After 1500 the Shroud image was used more widely in Christian art and devotion. The image was reproduced in prints, in paintings and in devotional books, and the face of Christ in many works shows the influence of the Shroud image. The use of the image was sometimes explicit, and sometimes a matter of general resemblance. The period shows the Shroud becoming part of the visual vocabulary of the Passion.
The widespread use of the image after 1500 makes the later comparisons harder to test. A painting made in the seventeenth century may show the influence of the Shroud, of the icons, or of other Passion images, and the historian must separate the sources. The early comparisons, from the Byzantine and medieval periods, are more useful for the question of origin, and the later ones are more useful for the question of reception.
The face as a devotional object
The face of Christ in the Christian tradition has always been a devotional object, and its representation was shaped by the needs of prayer and worship. The icon was a window onto the holy, and the face was the point at which the viewer met the divine. The Shroud face has been received in the same way, and many viewers have treated it as an image of the person it represents. The devotional reception does not settle the question of origin, but it shapes the way the image is compared with others.
The series acknowledges the devotional reception and does not dismiss it. It also notes that the devotional value of an image is not evidence about its physical origin, and it asks the reader to keep the two questions separate.
Reading the comparisons with care
A reader who meets a claim of resemblance between the Shroud face and a painting should ask a series of questions. Which image of the Shroud was used, and in what form? Which landmarks were chosen, and why? Was a control set of images tested? Was the date of the comparison image secure? Was the comparison made before or after the conclusion was known? And does the resemblance support a particular direction of influence, or only a shared type?
These questions do not decide the matter, but they show whether a claim has been tested. A comparison that answers them openly is more useful than one that presents a striking image without its method. The series asks its readers to apply the same standard to all of the comparisons in this chapter.
Checking the comparisons against the originals
Many of the comparisons in the literature rely on reproductions, such as photographs of coins, prints of icons and reproductions of manuscripts. The reproductions may alter the proportions, the colour and the detail, and a comparison made from a reproduction may not hold for the original. The series recommends that comparisons be checked against the originals wherever possible. The Pantocrator can be examined at Sinai, the Justinian coins in the numismatic collections, and the Pray Codex in Budapest. Each examination would test the claimed features at the level of the object.
The originals also show their condition. A coin may be worn, an icon may be repainted, and a manuscript may be damaged. The wear and the repainting affect the features that the comparisons depend on, and the historian must allow for them. A comparison that relies on a feature that is damaged or uncertain in the original is weaker than one that relies on a clear feature.
A method for the comparisons
A method for face comparisons should set out its steps in advance. It should name the images compared, the source of each image, the landmarks used, the measures taken, and the statistical or visual test applied. It should report all results, including those that do not support the claim. It should also include a control set of images from the same period, to test whether the agreement with the Shroud is greater than the agreement with other images of similar type. Without a control, a resemblance cannot be shown to be special.
The method should also state the limits of the comparison. A comparison of two faces can show that they share certain features. It cannot show that one was copied from the other, or that they share a common source, unless the historical record supports such a link. The series asks that the limits be stated clearly, and that the claims be kept within them.
What the comparisons leave to the next chapter
The comparisons in this chapter leave a question that the next chapter takes up directly. If the Shroud image cannot be shown to derive from a known model, and if the resemblance to the icons can be explained by a common type, then the question of how the image was made is open. That question is the subject of the forgery debate, and the next chapter sets out the arguments on both sides, with the evidence each side relies on.
What the faces contribute to the series
The comparisons of the face are the link between the forensic reading of the image and the history of art. They show how the image has been seen in different periods, and they show the limits of the argument from resemblance. The series concludes this part of the argument in the next chapter, which takes up the forgery question and the arguments on both sides.
The faces of the tradition are, in the end, the record of how a community chose to show Christ, and the Shroud has been drawn into that record since the nineteenth century. The comparisons show that the face on the cloth belongs to a world of images that had its own conventions, its own workshops and its own devotional purposes. They show that some features of the Shroud face are shared with that world, and that other features are harder to place. They do not show that the cloth was made from an icon, or that an icon was made from the cloth, and the reader who wants a firm conclusion will not find one here. What the comparisons do provide is a set of tests, each of which can be run, reported and checked. The series returns to those tests whenever a claim of resemblance is made, and the next chapter takes up the question that the comparisons raise without answering: how the image could have been made, and by whom. A reader who has followed the comparisons through this chapter will see that each step of the argument depends on a choice, whether of landmark, image, date or model. Making those choices explicit is the only way to tell a demonstrated resemblance from an attractive one, and the series applies that test to its own claims as well as to those of others. Where a comparison is persuasive, the reader is asked to check it against the originals before accepting it, and where it is weak, to say so plainly. This standard applies equally to the Pantocrator, the coins, the Pray Codex and the later copies, and the reader should hold each to it in turn.
References
- The Christ Pantocrator icon, Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai, sixth or seventh century. The icon and its date are discussed in the Byzantine art literature. Specific catalogue references to be confirmed before publication.
- The solidus of Justinian II, 692. The coinage and the dispute with Abd al-Malik are discussed in the numismatic literature. Specific catalogue numbers to be confirmed before publication.
- Vignon, P. (1902). Le Linceul du Christ. Paris: Masson. Publication details to be confirmed before publication.
- The Pray Codex, Budapest, c. 1192–1195. The illumination of the burial and its comparison with the Shroud are discussed in the Shroud literature and in the art-historical literature. Publication details to be confirmed before publication.