Face and back of the neck
The forensic survey of the Shroud image shows that the man who was wrapped in it had been hit hours before the death. Various bruises are on the face with swelling more on the right side of it than on the left one.
Moreover, it shows marks of bruised wounds especially near the eyebrows. The nose is diverted due to a fracture above the eyebrow area and left and right cheek bones, a disfigurement of the right eye, a seepage of blood from the mouth which appears somewhat distorted compared with the line of the eyebrows. The characteristic up side down y-shaped imprint on the forehead reveals a brow knitted in agony. Many seepages of blood from bruises caused by a small diameter point are in forehead, neck and hair. These bruises are radiating around the head to its top and seem to be caused by the imposition of a helmet of thorns. It is important to notice the seepage of blood at the centre of the forehead from a wound of the frontal vein, in the shape of a reversed '3', because it follows frontal wrinkles. The horizontal dark lines defining the face and the back are caused by some folds of the tissue.

Trunk and back
The trunk and back skin shows more than a hundred bruises escoriate, consisting of curved and coupled signs around two centimers long and which are on lower limbs too. They seem to be caused by the scourge, the roman instrument of torture constitued by a wooden handle with ropes whose ends have attached some "taxilli", little coupled leads in the shape of handlebars. In some points the rounding signs from these ropes are also visible.

At the same height of the left scapular and the above right areas there are quadrangular bruises from the signs left by an heavy and coarse object identifiable with the "patibulum", the horizontal plank of the cross that sometimes the condemned person carried on his back to the place of the execution. On the right side of the chest, at the same height of the fifth right rib space, a big bloodstain from an ovoid bruise stands out. The characteristics of this bruise are very important because they prove it was inflicted after the death of the subject.

Even around the blood coming out of it, that pours down to the back at kidney level clearly due to a emptying of the chest cavity when the corpse was put down horizontally, there is a serous mark full of reddish stains as it usually happens with blood from a corpse whose serous part already separated from the blood corpuscles.

Upper limbs and hands
On the front image the prints left by the upper limbs are clearly visible.

The arms (whose image is no more visible due to the scorching of the tissue after the Chambéry fire) are outstretched. On the forearms, lightly flexed inwards at the elbow level, there are long blood trickles. The left hand is over the right one. On the left wrist there is a characteristic bloodstain from two divergent trickles whose angle can be related to the two different positions of the condemned person on the cross: collapsed and lifted.
Blood comes out of an oval bruise that can be related to the injury of a tool headed like a nail. The location of this bruise is really interesting because it is not on the palm, following therefore the traditional crucifixion iconography, but it is on the wrist, on a clear space, called the “Destot’s space", between the carpus bones. This answers to security measures of the fixing of the upper limbs to the cross: as a matter of fact, the palm’s tissues can not hold the body’s weight without lacerating. The fact that the upper limbs were not set by the palms has also been confirmed by the discovery of a I century crucifix’s framework near Jerusalem. A similar bruise is on the right wrist as well but not visible because covered by the left hand.

Lower limbs
They can be easily detected both on the front and on the back pattern.

The scourge signs are evident. The knees have bruises very likely caused by some falls because there were some traces of mould both here and on the soles. Moreover, postmortem rigidity fixed the left knee in a more inflected position than the right one and, therefore, the image makes the left limb to appear shorter than the right one. Feet are clearly visible on the back print whereas a bloodstain, but not the limb’s somatic imprint, can be seen on the front print.

The right sole print is clear while of the left one we can see the back part near the heel only. This suggests that crucifixion was by an only nail and by laying the left foot on the right one. On the right sole there is the nail exit from which blood trickles stream down to the fingers. Some others stream down to the heel and therefore leaked out at Deposition time when the body was horizontal.

Burns, marks and gaps
In 1532 a fire burst in the chapel of the Chambéry ducal castle where the Shroud was folded in a silver case. A melted metal drop went clean through the Cloth destroying the tissue. This is why the typical triangular lacuna are symmetric. The two scorched black lines on the image right-hand and left-hand side are caused by the contact with the overheated case. In 1534 the Chambéry Poor Clares restored it applying patches on it. To strengthen the cloth structure damaged by the fire they sewed the Cloth and the patches on a linen cloth called Lining of Holland. For conservation reasons, these patches were then removed in 2002 and the Lining of Holland taken off and substituted with a new tissue that can be identified today under the bruises by its different color and weave.

Water-stains
The rhomb in shape stains, recurring in the centre and along the cloth borders, are caused by some water that wet the tissue some time ago. Once again, the imprints repeat symmetrically due to the way the Cloth was folded. The mark saw-toothed side is caused by the substances on the Cloth carried by the water.

Marks of the fire previous to Chambéry
On the Shroud there are further round and symmetric lacuna. However, the different disposition of the Chambéry bruises suggests a different kind of folding. No doubt these bruises are previous to the 1532 fire, since already documented in a 1516 Shroud pictorial copy today in Lierre, Belgium.

The upper corners lacuna and the strip
Along the conventionally called upper border (as a matter of fact, the Shroud was exposed with its front imprint on the left of the audience) a strip of the same Shroud tissue was sewed in ancient times. We do not know the reason but a lot was speculated about it. This strip has two clear lacuna at the extreme borders under which the support tissue can be easily seen. Once again, we do not know when and why this certainly ancient mutilation occured. Along the lower lacuna border, on the left top of anyone who looks at it, there is the area from which two tissue samples were taken: for product analysis on the tissue in 1973 and for carbon dating in 1988.

Positive and negative
The photo-positive image
The black and white picture of the face of the man of the Shroud shows how the tone difference between clear and dark image values is so small that the human eye can only perceive a human face features in its totality, whereas the details are not easy to identify and comprehend. The image presents a face whose brightness is distributed in an opposite way as far as the one we normally perceive is concerned, namely when the more prominent parts are clearer than more distant anatomic structures. Therefore, the Shroud imprint is like a negative. Bloodstains are different because directly calked on the tissue.



The photo-negative image
In the photo-negative image the chiaroscuro are reversed as far as a normal negative is concerned. Moreover, the spatial transposition causes an exchange of the right with the left part and viceversa. The cloth, light-coloured, looks dark whereas the stains corresponding to the anatomc areas in relief are clear with intensity tones reflecting the face curves. So, we are facing here the real appearence of the man of the Shroud as if he was in front of us included the correct positioning of the right and left sides of it.