VITTORE: IS IT A PAINTING?

As I am an orthopaedic and a traumatologist by profession, and university professor in Bari, some years ago I wanted to make radiograms of the TAC to realize  tridimensional  bony models, so I organized myself with a very sophisticated apparatus which obtains images. It is a very high resolution scanner, one of those used on the satellites to photograph the earth. 
The responsible Father in the friary of Manoppello, through a common friend, got to know my activity. As he wanted to examine closely the Holy Face, he got in touch with me and asked my collaboration to acquire some more detailed photographs to understand better what this image really is. This request gratified me very much. Immediately I went to Manoppello with my apparatus.

Which were the procedures and the techniques utilized to obtain all the data? I used a little digital scanner  applying it behind a camera with bellows where it acts as a film. It acquires the image as if it were a photograph but turns into a digital photograph that can be “memorized” together with a considerable quantity of data.
When the photograph is elaborated by computer, we can enlarge it considerably without losing resolution. In this manner we could analyse fibre by fibre or the whole image of the Holy Face. It is different from a normal photograph because the quantity of the data acquired is so considerable that we can elaborate the images constantly, as needed. The photographic image, on the contrary, even thou acquired  and fixed, can’t give other information  because the resolution is standardized.

Observing the Holy Face, we can  have the first sensation that we are in front of a painting. A careful analysis and the study of all the peculiarities perplexed me: the more we look at it, the more we doubt it is a painting.

Detail of the right eye



enlargement



larger enlargement

In fact, we can see this image in the same way if we are in front of it or behind it  and I do not know a painting giving the same image before and behind, especially if we put the source of light only in one side.  
The thinness of the Veil gives it an extraordinary transparence and also shows the same tonality of the colour.
My studies were searching: after I had photographed it in its place, I could observe the image obtained with the monitor that permits an extraordinary transparence  without putting out of the focus the images and I observed that in the space between the thread of the warp and the thread of the weft may not be found residuals of colours. 
The Relic of Manoppello is not an oil-painting because there is no deposit of colours among the threads; it is not a water-colour painting  because the outlines of the eyes and of the mouth are so clean while the water-colour would have soaked the threads in a not definite way with blurs and smudges in every particular; it is not a print  because the image is perfectly visible before an behind and this work dates back at least 1500 when the utilized techniques were not so sophisticated.
I think to go on with a photographic method amplifying more and more this image also by using my computer, trying to enter into the intimate structure of the fibre to verify if it has inside sediments of colours or it is a clear fibre which assumed a colour and I do not know why. Everything is wrapped in a fascinating mystery.