Why an Atheist Thinks the Shroud of Turin is the Real Deal

Change in Art Forms

Abruptly, throughout the Middle East, and eventually throughout Mediterranean Europe, depictions of Jesus became full frontal portraits with distinctive facial characteristics. Jesus was depicted with shoulder length hair, an elongated thin nose, and a forked beard. Numerous other characteristics appeared in these portraits and some of them were seemingly strange and of no particular artistic merit. Many portraits had two wisps of hair that dropped at an angle from a central parting of the hair. Many works showed Jesus with large “owlish” eyes. Paul Vignon, a French scholar, who first categorized these facial attributes in 1930, also described a square cornered U shape between the eyebrows, a downward pointing triangle on the bridge of the nose, a raised right eyebrow, accents on both cheeks with the accent on the right cheek being somewhat lower, an enlarged left nostril, an accent line below the nose, a gap in the beard below the lower lip and hair on one side of the head that was shorter than on the other side.