The Chrysanthemum Image on the Shroud of Turin

This page is best understood by first reading the page about the Christ Pantocrator.

It is difficult to see on the Shroud of Turin, but above the head and to the left (your left), at about a 45° angle, there is a faint image of what seems to be a petal flower. Computer enhancement makes it easier to see.

Even more difficult to see, and certainly tentative, there is a similar size and shape image to the right, a bit further out from the center line of the face but at the same vertical level. (See yellow box on third figure at right.*)

The Christ Pantocrator icon from St. Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai (ca 550 AD) also has distinctive flower images in the precisely same relative positions. If the Shroud, then the Image of Edessa, was the facial source for this icon as it seems to have been, then it is highly probable that the flower motif was also picked up from the shroud.

Are they really flowers?

Some scholars doubt that there are really flower images on the Shroud of Turin. Others believe the images are really there.

But for this argument that question is immaterial. If there are images that look like flowers, even if they are coincidental anomalies, and they are in the same relative place as there are on the Pantocrator icon, then it does strengthen the argument that the icon was sourced from the Image of Edessa.

The flower motif

The flower motif developed in various ways, as adornments for images of Christ, particularly in the Byzantine culture. Notice the extensive use of flower images on this Epitaphios, that seems inspired by the whole frontal image on the Shroud of Turin.

* Please carefully note that the image is as it is on the cloth and not as it is commonly depicted as a mirror image. Notice that the forehead bloodstain is on the left as a epsilon-shape rather than a three-shape.
 

Christ Pantocrator Icon at St. Catherine's Monastery

The Vignon Markings