Gary Vikan to give a talk on his recent book “The Holy Shroud: A Brilliant Hoax in the Time of the Black Death.”

Gary Vikan, former director of the Walters Art Museum, will give a talk about his recent book, The Holy Shroud: A Brilliant Hoax in the Time of the Black Death (Pegasus Books, 2020), in which he shows that the world’s most controversial relic, the Shroud of Turin, is not the burial cloth of Jesus but rather a photograph-like body print of a medieval Frenchman created by a brilliant artist serving the royal court in the time of the Black Death. While other scholars, and even the Catholic Church itself, have never confirmed the authenticity of the Shroud, the question always remained—how did that image get there? Combining copious research and decades of art-world experience with an accessible, wry voice, Vikan shows how one of the greatest hoaxes in the history of Christian relics came into being. The talk is sponsored by the Departments of Art and Religious Studies, the Center for the Arts and Humanities, and the Colby College Museum of Art.