Shroud of Turin Research at McCrone
The Shroud of Turin
According to Dr. Walter McCrone and his colleagues, the 3’ x 14’ cloth depicting Christ’s crucified body is an inspired painting produced by a medieval artist just before its first appearance in recorded history in 1356.
The faint sepia image is made up of billions of submicrometer pigment particles (red ochre and vermilion) in a collagen tempera medium. The pigments red ochre and vermilion with the collagen tempera medium was a common paint composition during the 14th century; before which, no one had ever heard of the shroud.
Initial Examination, 1979
Dr. McCrone determined this with the polarized light microscope (PLM) in 1979. This included careful inspection of thousands of linen fibers from 32 different areas (shroud and sample points), characterization of the only colored image-forming particles by color, refractive indices, polarized light microscopy, size, shape, and microchemical tests for iron, mercury, and body fluids. The red ochre is present on 20 of both body- and blood-image tapes; the vermilion only on 11 blood-image tapes. Both pigments are absent on the 12 non-image tape fibers. The paint pigments were dispersed in a collagen tempera produced in medieval times, perhaps, from parchment. It is chemically distinctly different in composition from blood but readily detected and identified microscopically by microchemical staining reactions. Forensic tests for blood were uniformly negative on fibers from the blood-image tapes. Based on these findings, McCrone postulated that the shroud was painted in 1355.
Further Research, 1980s
In 1980, using electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction, McCrone found red ochre (iron oxide, hematite) and vermilion (mercuric sulfide); the electron microprobe analyzer found iron, mercury, and sulfur on a dozen of the blood-image area samples. The results fully confirmed Dr. McCrone’s results and further proved the image was painted twice — once with red ochre, followed by vermilion to enhance the blood-image areas.
In 1987, carbon dating at three prestigious laboratories agreed well with his date: 1355 by microscopy and 1325 by C-14 dating. The suggestion that the 1532 Chambery fire changed the date of the cloth is ludicrous. Samples for C-dating are routinely and completely burned to CO2 as part of a well-tested purification procedure. The suggestions that modern biological contaminants were sufficient to modernize the date are also ridiculous. A weight of 20th century carbon equaling nearly two times the weight of the Shroud carbon itself would be required to change a 1st century date to the 14th century (see Amount of Modern Biological Contaminant Required to Raise the Date of a 36 A.D. Shroud). Besides this, the linen cloth samples were very carefully cleaned before analysis at each of the C-dating laboratories.
Published Research
Experimental details on the tests carried out by McCrone are available in five papers published in three different peer-reviewed journal articles: The Microscope Volume 28:3/4, p. 105, p. 115, 1980; The Microscope Volume 29:1, p. 19, 1981; Wiener Berichte uber Naturwissenschaft in der Kunst, 4/5, p.50, 1987/1988; and Accounts of Chemical Research, Volume 23:3, pp. 77-83, 1990.
Conclusion
The “Shroud” of Turin is a beautiful painting created about 1355 for a new church in need of a pilgrim-attracting relic.
The reaction to Dr. McCrone’s work on the shroud:
PRODr. Ernst Martin, retired Director of the Basel, Switzerland Police Crime Lab: “You were the first to conclude (1980) that the Turin shroud is a fake. The carbon datings of 1988 show how right you were.”Marigene Butler, Head, Art Conservation, Philadelphia Museum of Art: “I have always felt that your microscopical analyses of the organic and inorganic image materials are absolutely convincing….All of us here agree with your 14th century date for the ‘Shroud’ of Turin.”
Dr. Mary Virginia Orna, Chemistry, University of New Rochelle, N.Y.: “I am convinced it [the Shroud of Turin] is a medieval forgery…. Your evidence is conclusive.”Linus Pauling: “I must say that I think you should not worry about the Catholic Church in relation to the Turin shroud. I had thought, in fact, that the matter had finally been settled. The objections to accepting the results of scientific studies are just ludicrous.”
CONSTURP: “Your data is [sic] misrepresented, your observations are highly questionable, and your conclusions are pontifications rather than scientific logic.”The Church: “You are the one person to challenge the enduring mystery of the Shroud. The Turin Center of Sindonology [a.k.a. Catholic Church] accepts the challenge from you…. We are all in a challenging mood in Turin, having fought and won many a battle.”Heller and Adler: “…demonstrated that McCrone’s claims for the presence of red paint were prematurely and erroneously made with insufficient data….After hurried and superficial evaluation, he rushed into print to charge that the shroud is a painted fake.”Kersten and Gruber in “The Jesus Conspiracy”: “McCrone claimed that iron in the marks [Shroud image] was a clear indication of an iron oxide pigment. This theory from a man who had never seen the cloth itself [Not true. Dr. McCrone did see the Shroud in Turin in 1978] was decisively refuted by further tests.”