The Christ of the Shroud of Turin and other reminders
From an article about an exhibition of the work by William Kurelek, one of Canada’s greatest 20th-century artists at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario:
Artists’ self-portraits can tell us both what someone looks like and what makes them tick. He’s placed himself in front of a wall neatly covered with images. A picture of the dead Christ from the Shroud of Turin [far right in picture] might serve as a reminder of his recent conversion to Roman Catholicism. A reproduction of an Eastern European icon of Mary holding the Christ child and a photograph of Ukrainian dancers hint at his roots. He liked to paint from photographs — and memory.
Hat tip to Joe Marino.
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Categories: Art
The Shroud of Turin may be the real burial cloth of Jesus. The carbon dating, once seemingly proving it was a medieval fake, is now widely thought of as suspect and meaningless. Even the famous Atheist Richard Dawkins admits it is controversial. Christopher Ramsey, the director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Laboratory, thinks more testing is needed. So do many other scientists and archeologists. This is because there are significant scientific and non-religious reasons to doubt the validity of the tests. Chemical analysis, all nicely peer-reviewed in scientific journals and subsequently confirmed by numerous chemists, shows that samples tested are chemically unlike the whole cloth. It was probably a mixture of older threads and newer threads woven into the cloth as part of a medieval repair. Recent robust statistical studies add weight to this theory. Philip Ball, the former physical science editor for Nature when the carbon dating results were published, recently wrote: “It’s fair to say that, despite the seemingly definitive tests in 1988, the status of the Shroud of Turin is murkier than ever.” If we wish to be scientific we must admit we do not know how old the cloth is. But if the newer thread is about half of what was tested – and some evidence suggests that – it is possible that the cloth is from the time of Christ.
I briefly met this artist while staying at a Russian Orthodox commune.He was greatly influenced by baroness Catherine de Hueck Dorothy who left Russia with her family when a little girl and who was the founder of Madonna House apostolate in Ontairio.She was the one that was responsible for William Kurelek’s return to his faith.