Spirituality

Turin shroud was laid on a sculpture, not a real body, study finds

By T.K. Randall
August 1, 2025

Image: Turin Shroud
Credit: CC BY-SA 3.0 / Dianelos Georgoudis Believed by many to be the actual burial cloth of Jesus himself, the Turin Shroud - which is today situated in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin, Italy - has long been the subject of intense scrutiny, controversy and debate.

A significant number of researchers have made conflicting claims about the shroud, with some hailing it as authentic and others suggesting that it is either a forgery or not the shroud of Jesus at all.

Now, according to a new study, the shroud was most likely not created by being placed on an actual human body but was instead produced by being placed over a low-relief sculpture.

This finding comes courtesy of Brazilian 3D digital designer Cicero Moraes - an expert at historical face reconstructions - who used computer simulations to show how cloth drapes over a human body."The image on the Shroud of Turin is more consistent with a low-relief matrix," he told Live Science.

"Such a matrix could have been made of wood, stone or metal and pigmented (or even heated) only in the areas of contact, producing the observed pattern."

By contrast, if the shroud were placed on a real body, the image on it would have been much more stretched out than what we actually see on it today.

While Moraes tends to favor the idea that the shroud was still created within a funerary context, it is clear from his findings that the imprint was not the result of it being placed over Jesus' body.

"It is plausible to consider that artists or sculptors with sufficient knowledge could have created such a piece, either through painting or low relief," he wrote.

Source: Live Science

Tags: Turin Shroud, Jesus