An Artful Relic

“This excellent book reveals the distance between baroque and present day aesthetic theorizing.”

—David Carrier Athenaeum Review

“Casper has expanded art history by his detailed analysis of the multi-leveled milieu that produced and promoted the devotional cult of the Shroud of Turin, thereby integrating visual culture with material culture, popular culture, and theology.”

—Diane Apostolos-Cappadona Reading Religion

“Given the historiographical delay in this subject, we can only rejoice to see new avenues opened up by the work of Andrew R. Casper.”

—Nicolas Sarzeaud Sehepunkte

“An Artful Relic manages to surpass the boundaries of the immediate subject matter: it is as much a reading of the Holy Shroud as it is about seventeenth-century semiotics. Rather than allowing the Holy Shroud to become an entirely self-contained entity, Casper interprets the Holy Shroud as a crux of broader interpretive and artistic practices in the early modern era.”

—Angelica Modabber Religion and the Arts

“After reading this book one can only be grateful to Casper for having examined the relationship between the Shroud, art, and theology so well from a perspective that is unique, rarely encountered, truly innovative, and fully grounded in the sources. Particularly praiseworthy is the richness of its bibliography and the unpublished material consulted, especially that in Italian, the author’s knowledge of which is absolutely impressive and is always treated with precision and expertise.”

—Andrea Nicolotti Church History

“This award-winning book is an original and multifaceted approach to a well-known relic. [Casper’s] inquisitiveness about the juncture of artifice and authenticity, relics, and icons stimulates questions about art theory, then and now, as well as what scholars and the public consider art.”

—Gerriann Brower Renaissance Quarterly

“An Artful Relic is engaging and original. Casper’s careful reading of visual and textual sources, as well as his integration of secondary sources on related topics, develops an important new way of considering the Shroud of Turin and its interpretation and devotional context in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.”

—Kirstin Noreen, Loyola Marymount University

“The work of Andrew Casper is a surprising and felicitous exception amidst the rather monotonous landscape of ‘sindonic’ literature. Indeed, the first reflection that emerges from reading the book’s exquisite pages is the relief that finally some aspects of the sindon, submerged by the ‘authenticationist propaganda,’ shed new light on the subject.”

—Paolo Antinucci Catholic Historical Review

Andrew R. Casper is Associate Professor of Art History at Miami University. He is the author of Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy, also published by Penn State University Press.