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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining read, interesting hypothesis, August 21, 2001
This book purports to put forth what the authors consider is a completely new twist on the Turin Shroud. Unfortunately this is yet another book where we are dealing with a relatively "anonymous informant." Here the anonymous informant is a man named "Giovanni." It should be granted that this reliance on an anonymous source does nothing, a priori, to disprove the hypothesis put forth in the book but it certainly does give one pause.So what does this "informant" have to do with the Turin Shroud? Well, this man apparently provides the authors with the information that Leonardo was heavily involved in the occult, was the "Grand Master" of a secret society and was responsible for the Turin Shroud. Not only was Leonardo responsible for creating the Shroud, the mysterious "Giovanni" said that Leonardo used a type of photographic technique - one that had not come to light since Leonardo employed it. The key to science is repeatability of results. The authors go into a little detail about their own three-dimensional work with the Shroud images via the work of a man named Andy Haveland-Robinson, a consultant in computer graphics operations. This is important because they claim that their findings show a lack of three-dimensional information, in direct contrast to the VP-8 studies done earlier. (It can be said, however, that the original work with the VP-8 is highly suspect.) Nevertheless, we really have nothing to go on except their chapter eight which explains the basics behind their techniques. One key element is: would Leonardo have had the necessary materials available to him for this venture? We have to consider that by history as we know it, any photographic technique at all was more than three hundred years in the future. The authors say that the materials he would have needed would have been available. However, the authors, in attempting to recreate the work of Leonardo that they believe he did, did not use only materials that existed at his time. (In other words, they did use materials that only came into use after Leonardo's time.) As they freely admit, they had to make some concessions. This, no matter how small the concession, calls into question their hypothesis. They do say that it is possible that history is wrong as to when some of those materials came into use and it must be admitted that it is not impossible that Leonardo could have made use of them - but, in any event, that does not make for an air-tight hypothesis. Certainly not as air-tight as the authors routinely claim through the course of the book. Beyond that, why was the process never revealed by Leonardo, revealed by someone else, or even just discovered by someone else? We know that Leonardo was very secretive in general and he was accused of sorcery at one point in his life. But this does not necessarily show why someone else might not have developed it. Or why the technique has not appeared in any of Leonardo's notebooks that have been found (and, granted, many have been lost). Again: not disproofs of the hypothesis - just more wiggle-room for questioning. The authors claim that Leonardo may have viewed photography as part of his "magical" and "hermetical" practices. The authors state that "it is likely that Leonardo himself would have regarded basic photography as something magical." I am not so sure of that. Even if such studies were considered magical in some fashion, that does not mean Leonardo would have looked at them that way. It is known that Leonardo had good ideas about how the human eye works, mainly from dissecting the eyes, that were certainly not magical. In fact, he seems to have equated light with a wave that had a definite speed. We also know he was fascinated with the investigation of lenses and mirrors, as well as light in general. It later came to light that Leonardo had invented one of the first photometers (for measuring the brightness of an object) as well as drawing up the design for a camera obscura, which he publicly showed during his lifetime. (The authors do mention most of this and yet they still seem to think that Leonardo would have only placed photographic-like processes in the realm of magic.) This is not to say, however, that Leonardo was not accussed of magic - or, actually, of sorcery. The Church also took a fairly dim view of these proceedings and thus it would have been wise to keep some of this research under wraps. The authors believe that the Shroud is a composite image. As they say: "We believe that it is composed of three images - the face, the body from the neck down at the front, and all of the head and back." Furthermore, they believe that the face image is, in fact, that of Leonardo da Vinci. This is partly based on evidence that the authors feel they adduced regarding that the face on the image is a "bad fit" in the sense that it apepars to be too small in relation to the body. There is also the idea that in all images of the Shroud, there is a very distinctive cut off between the upper torso and the head. In other words, the neck is completely missing. However there are vastly in the minority on this part of their hypothesis. Does that make it wrong? Of course not, but the authors really do not go into other people's hypotheses all that much as to why the image is not composite. The book was meant to persuade. After reading it, I cannot say that I was completely persuaded. However, I can say that I was intrigued. The authors presented their case well and I would certainly like to do further investigation into this matter. I think the authors make a few assumptions along the way but I found nothing that I found was just totally unrealistic in terms of their assumptions, just perhaps a little hopeful. They are on much less stable ground with their alleged informant and the Priory of Sion - particularly because the Priory of Sion has all but been completely discredited in scholarly circles, recognized for the hoax it was. Since this is not a fundamental part of their book (when you get into their hypothesis), it does not detract overly much from the book. Overall: it is a good book that is well written and paced and gives some good information about the history of the Shroud (albeit, some selective history) and some of the research done with it. I would recommend you read it - but also read other books about this subject so as to get a more balanced viewpoint.
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by Lynn Picknett
by Peter Lance
