THE MAN OF THE HOLY SHROUD

Doctor Pierre Barbet carried out the first forensic studies about the image of the Man in the Holy Shroud of Turin in the 1930s. Since then many experts on legal medicine recognise that the signs of torture and execution are identical to those which Christ suffered.

Since 2001 Juan Manuel Miñarro López, professor of Sculpture at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Seville, has made artistic recreation labours which reproduce in a three-dimensional way the features the Holy Shroud shows:

A tortured man whose face has a strong swelling on the right cheek and the nasal cartilage is broken. There are sweat, tears, blood and saliva. The wounds show venous blood as well as arterial blood. There are more than 60 pricks in the head caused by thorns and many double and parallel wounds which could be provoked by more than 100 blows using a flagrum taxilatum. Furthermore, there is a great bruise and a wound on the left knee. The man was crucified using nails which went through his wrists and his feet. He was also speared on the right side between the 5th and the 6th rib.

Professor Miñarro has reconstructed the face and the body of the Man of the Holy Shroud in detail, under the supervision of coroners and after a documentary, artistic and anatomical research.