LA VOCE DEL POPOLO - Wednesday,
August 28, 2002
Eliminated the Holland cloth
and the fire patches – The digital map
The «restored»
Shroud, soon the new images
by
Marco BONATTI
It will be “a new” Shroud the one which is going to be shown in the next
weeks by the Custodian Cardinal Poletto: in fact, in June and July important
works of “restoration” of the Cloth kept in the Cathedral of Turin have
been carried out. The “patches” that had been sewn by the Clares of Chambéry
on the Shroud image sides to repair the1532 fire damages have been removed
and it was proceeded to a complete review of the seam system, so that the
cloth could be preserved as “spread” as possible, which contributes, in
fact, to reduce the possible formation of folds. Moreover, the “Holland
cloth,” which had acted as the Shroud backing for more than 450 years,
has been removed and replaced. All the seam interventions have been carried
through by Dr. Mechthild Flury Lemberg, former director of Bern Abegg Museum
and textile expert, helped by Dr. Irene Tomedi. The patches and old seams
removal has also allowed to remove the dusts and the several debris that
have accumulated on the Sheet in the course of the centuries. Every
removed fragment has been catalogued and is kept in the Archbishopric.
Another work has concerned the complete electronic scanning of the two
faces of the Shroud, carried out by the team of Prof. Paolo Soardo from
the Institute “G. Ferraris” of Turin: now it will be possible to have the
Cloth entire "digital mapping” (in November 2000 a first scanning had been
limited to the back of the Shroud and to the central part, since the patches
seams prevented the passage of the scanner).
The interventions are a part of the program already drawn by the Commission
for the preservation, that had supplied the Custodians (first, Cardinal
Saldarini, now, Cardinal Poletto) with the indications and the criteria
to create the best possible conditions of preservation. Now such
a “plan” can be considered as completed: the Shroud has got a place of
its own inside the Cathedral, a case suitable for the preservation, and
all the possible interventions on the Cloth in order to guarantee its optimal
conditions of preservation have been carried out.
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