I’ve long been fascinated by the shroud. I’d be interested in seeing another negative image picture that is older. I’m unaware of any that are extant. Perhaps someone here might know of some...
They’ve been looking for anything that could qualify. Except for some flower and plant imprints left on the pages of old books where they were left to be pressed and dried, with the imprints leaving quasi-negative image’s of the plants and flowers on the paper pages, all they’ve found for their efforts is the sound of crickets in the night.
There are no contemporary efforts by any artists in the period to create a reverse color or reverse contrast image of anything in nature. The concept of reverse light was not even considered. For those who believe the fantasies of Picknett and Price that Leonardo Da Vinci created the Shroud, there is nothing in his copious written notes, even in his encrypted documents, that such a thing ever crossed his mind. . . even when he was working with light and a camera obscura with its inverted images.
Even those artists making copies of the Shroud did not figure on making exact reverse real world correct color images, although our modern impression of the appearance of Jesus was most likely developed over the ages from iconography based on the Shroud in its various disguises throughout history as the Image of Edessa, the Mandylion, or even the Veronica. Much of early church Jesus iconography bears strong points of congruence with the Shroud image, including using the blood stain on the forehead as an errant lock of hair, owlish eyes, forked beard, a U Shape between the eye brows, and even a prominent line across the neck where there is a permanent crease in the Shroud. These icons started appearing in the early 500s, when the Image of Edessa was revealed after being walled up behind the city gates to prevent its destruction by iconoclastic invaders.