Unknotting A Tangled Tale Of Towels (Mandylion)

Scientific tests have established that an icon, revered as an imprint of Christ’s face, is 13th century

Tests on a painting, called the Mandylion, revered as a miraculous imprinted image of Christ, have revealed it to have been made in the 13th century. There are several early versions of the image, but the one in Genoa is the first to have been subjected to a thorough scientific examination. The results are being presented at an exhibition (until 18 July) in the city’s Museo Diocesano as part of the European Capital of Culture celebrations. Appropriately, the show is presented as a journey, both spiritual and scientific—since the venerated icon has links with Syria, Turkey, Sinai and Armenia.

The Mandylion is traditionally believed to be a representation of the face of Jesus miraculously transferred to a towel (from the Arabic word mandil, “small cloth”), but is not to be confused with the cloth, which also bears His likeness, with which Veronica wiped Christ’s face as He went to Calvary.

The first mention of the existence of the Mandylion comes from the sixth century. In 944 it was brought from Edessa to Constantinople by emperor Constantine VII. The imperial city lost the Mandylion in the crusader conquest of 1204, when it was sold to the French and taken to the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. Other versions existed from early on in Rome and Genoa.

The provenance of the Genoa Mandylion can be traced back to the 1370s, when Byzantine emperor John V presented it to Leonardo Montaldo, Captain of the Genoese colony on the Bosphorus and later Doge of Genoa. On Montaldo’s death in 1384, he bequeathed his Mandylion to the Armenian monastery attached to the Church of San Bartolomeo in Genoa, where it has remained for over 600 years.

The church recently agreed to a small sample of wood being removed from the poplar panel, for carbon dating at the University of Lecce. The results show that there is a 90% probability that the panel on which the painted linen image is fixed dates from between 1240-90.

Other objects associated with the Genoa Mandylion were also examined. Most important is the magnificent gilded silver frame, which was made in Constantinople in the mid-14th century. Enclosing the original frame are two later cases made in Italy, one in 1601 and the other in 1702.

The back of the Genoa Mandylion is covered by a fine piece of 10th-century Syrian silk. The fact that the original Mandylion arrived in Constantinople in 944 has led exhibition co-curator Colette Dufour to suggest that this silk could have once formed a covering for the original icon.

Also temporarily on show in Genoa are a pair of diptych panels from the Greek Orthodox monastery of St Catherine’s, which have left Sinai for the first time in over 1,000 years. Art-historical detective work has proved that these must originally have been wings for another Mandylion.

The upper-right image on the diptych depicts King Abgar receiving the imprinted towel of Christ. Abgar is given the facial features of Constantine VII, who brought the Mandylion from Edessa in 944. The other wing shows the Apostle Thaddeus, whom Christ had sent to establish the church in Edessa. The wings are 28 centimetres high, the same as the Genoa Mandylion, which is the clinching evidence that they were created for a triptych with the face of Christ.

The Sinai wings have been dated on stylistic grounds to the second-half of the 10th century and were probably painted at St Catherine’s. It is therefore now being suggested that a copy of the Mandylion was given by Constantine VII to the monastery very soon after the original had reached him in 944, with the wings being created as protective shutters for this precious gift. A photographic reconstruction of the “Mandylion Triptych” has never been published, and appears in The Art Newspaper for the first time.

The mystery is what happened to the lost Sinai central panel of the Mandylion. As a small object, it was vulnerable to theft, but what is curious is that the wings were separated from it and survive. This has led exhibition co-curator Professor Gerhard Wolf to propose that the Sinai Mandylion “may have been returned to the emperor in Constantinople after the original was seized by Crusaders in 1204”.

Legend has it that King Abgar of Edessa, who reigned during the time of Jesus, was ill, and believed that an image of the Saviour would cure him. He sent an emissary to Jerusalem to paint Christ’s portrait. Instead Jesus took a towel and put it to his face, which was brought back to Edessa, in ancient Syria (Sanliurfa in present-day Turkey). The Sainte-Chapelle version was looted during the French Revolution and probably destroyed.

Another Mandylion was taken to Rome and by 1587 it was in the Convent of the Poor Clares at San Silvestro in Capite. In 1870, it passed to the Vatican. It is currently in the “St Peter and the Vatican” exhibition at the San Diego Museum of Art (until 6 September). The US catalogue accepts the Vatican dating, ascribing it to the third to fifth centuries, but the entry reveals considerable uncertainty. However, Professor Wolf believes that the Vatican icon dates from the same period as Genoa’s, and is also 13th century.

This is bull.

The REAl Mandylion is in Spain, not in Genoa, and its no picture. Its the actual "handerchief" which wrapped the head of Christ after the Crucifixtion. It has been connected with the Shroud of Turin, which is no fake, but the real burial shroud of Christ.

Belief in Christ and resurrection does not rest on the authenticity of any earthly evidence, but the existence of these relics both enrages and enfurates the anti-Christians and atheists, especially their effete and degenerate western intellectuals who only believe in the conceit of their own knowledge.

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