The Shroud Codex - Jerome R. Corsi [118]
Castle was amazed at how overwhelmed he felt viewing the Shroud in person for the first time. He had expected that seeing so many photographs of the Shroud since taking on Father Bartholomew as a patient would have jaded him to the experience. But standing in front of the actual Shroud for the first time, Castle was impressed.
To begin with, the size of the cloth made the object in real life appear much bigger than the photographs had suggested. Somewhat larger than fourteen feet long and three feet wide, the Shroud seen in real life was an impressive relic. It stretched vertically along the full length of the display frame that filled the back wall of the specially designed side chapel, with its blacked-out windows.
Castle’s next impression was that the image seen in real life was much more subtle than he had imagined. For what seemed like several minutes, Castle had to adjust his eyes and strain to make out the subtle reddish brown lines of the figure’s full-length frontal and dorsal images. Then, as he studied the Shroud inch by inch, the image became gradually more distinct.
When he was finally able to clearly make out all the lines in the body, including the scourge marks front and back, Castle was hit with the emotional impact of the image. Here in front of him was the full-body image of a man who had been tortured and crucified two thousand years ago. Yet the face looked serene, as if finally at peace in death. The arms crossed modestly in front of what was obviously a nude body reinforced the impression of serenity, at least until Castle allowed himself to appreciate the brutality of the nail wounds on the wrists and the evidence of blood flows along the arms. Was it possible he was looking at a true image of the crucified Christ? Even though he was a committed atheist, the thought still crossed Castle’s mind as he looked on the Shroud for the first time in person.
Marveling at the Shroud in front of him, Castle concluded that if the object were a fake, this was very possibly the most magnificent and most subtle painting ever done. He had seen many Leonardo paintings, including the Mona Lisa and the John the Baptist in the Louvre and the Last Supper in Milan. Yet no Leonardo painting held a candle to the Shroud. The Shroud, if Leonardo truly had painted it, was Leonardo’s crowning achievement.
Leonardo’s sfumato style required a subtle touch, such that brushstrokes were not evident at all. Leonardo’s drawings in his notebook sketches were intricate in their detail and fidelity to nature. But the delicacy with which this brutal image of a crucified man had been left on cloth was breathtaking. Perhaps no artist who ever lived had done more to bring anatomy to life than Leonardo, but the detail of the body of the man in the Shroud defied comprehension. Somehow Castle had the feeling the man in the Shroud was yet alive, only sleeping, or that had just died an instant earlier and the naked body enclosed in the burial cloth would still be warm to the touch.
Anne was equally moved. For her the yellow-straw colors of the linen itself and the subtle brownish red lines of the body created a feeling of warmness she had never before felt looking at art. She felt an immediate attachment to the life of the man in the Shroud as she began to read his struggles and hardships in the dark shadows that defined the closed eyes and in the blood soaking his brow and hair from the crown of thorns. Yet there was a quiet dignity in the soft but firm line that formed his mouth and the elegant nose that gave his face a look of majesty, despite the obviously cruel death he suffered. Looking on the Shroud for the first time in person, Anne felt certain that Jesus had defied his crucifiers by living even to this day in the preservation of this serene image stretched before her.
Father Middagh crossed himself and said a quiet prayer. He had first seen the Shroud in person during the 1998 exhibition, but the impact it made on him today was double the initial impression. After decades of study, spending every waking hour poring over the available