Page - 61 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/01

other. The Besançon shroud is placed below it on the right. Each piece is la- beled, as “S. Sindon Taurinensis” and “S. Sudarium Bisontinum” respectively. Against the neutral background, a sinuous fine line with darker areas surrounds each representation, a trompe-l’oeil meant to simulate the materiality of the linen, the creases in the fabric and the shadows they cast. Both shrouds are positioned horizontally on the paper, in a pictorial correspondence to the actual presentation of the venerated textile objects. During the ostentions at Easter and on Ascension Day, the shrouds were shown to the public, the barely visible images on the linen marking the trace left by the body, which by its very ab- sence calls attention to the miracle of Christ’s resurrection. The representations of the prone figures on the two shrouds appear, indeed, to be deliberately faint, clearly intended to convey the impression of a mere trace and seeking to avoid any association by an onlooker with paintings. The plate, aptly positioned in the last part of the tract, is noteworthy in many respects. It was a new visual creation, evidently commissioned by Chifflet from a local craftsman, probably Jean de Loysi, who on the basis of this first en- graving went on to produce, quite successfully, a rich iconographic variety of printed images of the Besançon shroud for pilgrims.32 Typologically, Loysi’s rep- resentation was close to those of antiquitates in the treatise and, unlike the two narrative illustrations by Galle, had no particular aesthetic ambition. Its declared function was one of pure documentation. Still, the image was more than just a supposedly faithful reproduction. The concurrent presentation in a single plate of the smaller, until then less-publicized local relic with the famous shroud of Turin was conceptually bold, a targeted confrontation that was meant to reach a broader audience through the chosen medium of print, raise the status of the Besançon cloth and publicize it further. It was an invitation to the onlookers to verify the book’s contention: they were to establish the conclusiveness of the explanations offered by Chifflet for each and every congruence as well as for all the differences between the two shrouds. The simultaneous visualization of both objects in one illustratio, with the long caption on the lower left side carefully differentiating the “sindon” from the “sudarium” on a linguistic level and on a functional level,33 synthesized the essence of Chifflet’s argument and thorough investigation, clarifying, quite literarily, the complementarity of the two textiles and their equal importance as holy touch relics of Christ. The medium of engraving is one of mechanical reproduction; it reproduced a linen cloth, but what it really showed, as Chifflet had set out to prove, was not 32 The name was later spelled Loisy. On the attribution to Loysi and the local production of printed imag- es cf. Marcelli 2004, 71–75. 33 The caption reads as follows: “Sindon Taurinensis refert Corpus Christi cruentum et recens de Cruce depositium; Sudarium vero Besontinum exhibit illud jam lotus ac perunctum, et in Sepulchro composi- tum.” Between Erudition and Faith | 61www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/1