Early in the morning I join the queue to view the Shroud up close. After an hour or so I make it into [Turin] Cathedral and walk up the aisle to await my turn. From where I am standing the Shroud is hidden behind a column, so I contemplate the altarpiece in the side chapel next to me, a colourful scene of the Resurrection. A notice explains that it was painted in 1575 by Giacomo Rossignolo, court artist to the Savoys. It shows Christ, naked but for a swathe of white drapery tied around his hips, flying up out of a sarcophagus in a blaze of heavenly glory, while the soldiers guarding the tomb look on in startled amazement.
Finally, along with a score of other pilgrims, I am ushered into the presence of the Shroud. At last I can see it properly with my own eyes. I already have a detailed knowledge of the image from the many photographs I have pored over in the past, but I am still not prepared for the sight of the real thing. It is infinitely more impressive than any photograph can convey.
Mentally, I erase the burn marks and concentrate on the head-to-head figures, spread-eagled across the cloth like a macabre heraldic emblem. They appear almost the same colour as the linen, but just a tone or half a tone darker, virtually the colour of pale white skin. It looks almost as if they have been dabbed on with pure water, or as if the cloth has been gently inflated with their presence.
The image is subtler than it appears in photographs, yet the figures also seem more coherent, perhaps because of their human scale, perhaps because their extreme faintness encourages the mind to supply the missing definition. Visually, it is difficult to locate them with respect to the cloth – they could be resting on it, or just behind it, or within it. Lose focus and the whole thing can seem like an illusion, but look again and the figures remain stubbornly there, as if a mental image had somehow projected itself out into the world and settled on the cloth.
Fortunately, I am standing near the centre, so I can twist my head and regard the figure face-to-face. The effect is mesmeric.
Seen horizontally, the figure is eerie and evocative; seen vertically, it is faintly terrifying. The vacant, glaring eyes – two white discs amid a face that is barely there – hold me spellbound. No other image I have ever seen comes close to it – not the frowning visage of Michelangelo’s Moses, not the frightful stare of Goya’s Saturn. The sense of a veiled presence is inescapable.
With my head cocked awkwardly to one side, I find it easy to imagine there is someone there behind the image, returning my gaze. But, like all illusions, he gives nothing away; he just stares back, silent and unblinking.
Before the 18th century, I reflect, images were not viewed with rational detachment. Surveying a broad spectrum of human societies, including the ancient Near East, it is clear that people have traditionally treated images in ways that we would regard as plainly superstitious. Throughout most of history images have been viewed as mysterious, metaphysical beings.
Moreover, before the Enlightenment, images of gods, saints, spirits and ancestors were routinely credited with power, not only affecting the emotions of those who looked at them, but also influencing the course of events. In the premodern world, images were perceived to be, in some sense, alive.
To perceive images as alive is to succumb to a form of “animism”, the attribution of life to inanimate things. And whenever images of people are considered animate, they are also anthropomorphised, ie, credited with human-like thoughts and emotions.
However odd such ways of thinking might seem to those of us brought up to think rationally and scientifically, both animism and anthropomorphism are deep-seated impulses, found the world over.
Images, we might say, naturally come alive in human minds. But they are obviously not alive like us. Animated images belong, therefore, to the domains of the magical, the uncanny, the supernatural and the divine.
As I stand there, before the shroud, I notice myself willing the face to become clearer, even though I know it is, in essence, indistinct. When we are asked to move on, I linger for just a few moments, still hoping to catch something more. The desired communion, though, remains elusive. Slowly, I pass along to the exit, my eyes traversing the full length of the dorsal figure as I go. The man in the Shroud has turned his back on me; the encounter sadly is over.
According to the philosopher Richard Wollheim, it takes a couple of hours for a great painting to disclose itself to the viewer. I have been able to scrutinise the Shroud for only a few minutes, but in that time, I feel, it has revealed as much of itself as it ever will. My expectations have been fulfilled; a theory six years in the making has received its imprimatur.
Feeling rather light-headed, I make my way out of the cathedral and wander along to the Piazza Castello, ruminating on the experience I have just had, trying to fix it in my memory.
Eventually, walking aimlessly down a side street, I stop before a shop window displaying various prints and posters of the Shroud. Instantly, the vision in my head is reduced to a set of glossy photographs. The spell is broken.
The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection by Thomas de Wesselow (published by Penguin, £20) is available from Telegraph Books for £18 plus £1.25 postage & packing. To order, call 0844 871 1515; or go online to books.telegraph.co.uk.
