Original Copies: the Newest Reproductions of the Shroud of Turin

Abstract

The Shroud of Turin is one of Christianity’s most famous, and controversial, sacred artifacts. A large part of its fame is due to the manufacture of reproductions which for five centuries have provided the means to worship the Shroud in absentia. The newest of these, from a project titled Lino Val Gandino, interweave the legacies of centuries of copying up through and including modern digital renderings, multimedia broadcasts, and mass-produced pilgrimage souvenirs that today sustain devotion to the original Shroud. But they stand apart by the unprecedented attention to recreating the original through novel forms of production to achieve enhanced material and mimetic exactness. This paper argues that the Lino Val Gandino reproductions of the Shroud of Turin become “original copies” that make claims to their own authenticity and originality. In so doing, these copies constitute mediative and material means of religious devotion not recognized in the types of artistic images and popular objects hitherto studied by scholars in art history and religious studies.