unexplained phenomena
In addition to the already narrated historical fact of the sudden appearance of the prodigious image, there are a series of inexplicable phenomena:
DURATION OF THE TILMA: The ayate, woven from maguey fiber, has a duration of about twenty years; but in the case of the Guadalupana tilma, not only does it last for more than 450 years, but it is extraordinarily soft, to the point that for many years experts thought it was a wild palm that gives a softer fabric.
Even more: in 1791, cleaning the frame with strong water, it fell on the upper part of the tilma, to the right of the observer. The fabric should have been destroyed, however, only a yellowish stain remained, which with time disappears, as if the tilma was regenerating itself, just like living beings!
THE PAINT: According to the analyzes of the fibers, made in 1936 by the German doctor Ricardo Kuhn, Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1938, in these fibers, one red and one yellow, there are no vegetable, animal, or mineral dyes. This has been confirmed by the Smith-Callagan study, regarding the original image, as opposed to the additions. In addition, no preparation or primer was given to the canvas, as is customary and necessary for it to hold paint well.
Already in 1775, Dr. José Ignacio Bartolache y Díaz de Posada (founder of "El Mercurio Volante", the first medical journal published in America) published in "La Gaceta de México" his intention to investigate the inexplicable freshness of the image. For this he had the Indians weave four ayates, two of maguey and two of wild palm. He did not manage to match the tilma, but choosing the best, and the best painters, he ordered two copies to be made as exact as possible of the Virgin of Guadalupe. They weren't the perfect copies either, although they were very beautiful. One was given to the nuns of the Teaching, and no more is known of her. Another was placed protected by two windows in 1789 in the Pocito chapel, on the slopes of the Tepeyac hill. Already in 1796 it had to be removed from the altar, completely discolored and the paint chipped, then it disappeared.
And yet the original is still preserved as recently painted (painted or whatever), despite having been exposed, even without glass, for 116 years to all the humidity and saltpeter of that region of lakes, to all the smoke from the candles, dust, innumerable insects, the fervor of the faithful who kissed him and touched him with a multitude of pious objects.
Unscathed by time and so many destructive elements, it was also unscathed by a bomb explosion in 1921. On November 14, a worker, Luciano Pérez, at half past ten in the morning left a bouquet of flowers on the main altar: inside he was hiding a charge of dynamite that exploded minutes later. The destruction was tremendous in the altar, and even the windows of the houses outside the basilica were broken. On the other hand, nothing happened to the painting of the Virgin, even the glass that must have been pulverized remained intact.
THE TECHNIQUE: No painter would have chosen such a fabric to paint a picture, more similar to sackcloth than a canvas. In addition, the tilma was made of two pieces, with a seam in the middle (which does not affect the Virgin's face because it is indiñada to her right). But what is remarkable, another of the inexplicable phenomena, is that the artist has been able to take advantage of all the imperfections of the fabric as a pictorial element.
Dr. Rodrigo Franyutti, one of the researchers of the image of Guadalupe, says in his study The true and extraordinary face of the Virgin of Guadalupe: To give luminosity and volume to a face, at least two colors must be used, one light and another dark one for the shadows. But on the face of the Virgin there is not a single painted shadow. The eyebrows, the rim of the nose, the mouth, and the eyes are nothing more than the same cloth, devoid of any superimposed color with all its spots and irregularities, but used with such mastery that they seem extremely well drawn outlines; all the features are nothing more than slits in the fabric, stains and thick threads. For example, the profile that forms the nose is nothing more than the same fabric that ends in a thick thread in what is the tip of the nose.
In turn, the Smith-Callagan report affirms: «One of the wonderful and inexplicable techniques used to give realism to the painting, lies in the way in which the tilma is used, not prepared (with the absence of plaster or impasto), to give to the face a depth and appearance of life. This is evident, especially in the mouth, where a thread of the ayate protrudes from the plane of the ayate and perfectly follows the upper edge of the lip. Other gross blemishes of the same type appear under the pale area of the left and right cheeks and under the right eye. I consider it impossible that any human painter would have chosen a tilma with flaws in its fabric and located in such a way that they accentuated the lights and shadows to give a similar realism.
What is truly extraordinary about the face and hands is their quality of tone, which is a physical effect of reflected light, both from the crude tilma and from the painting itself. It is an indisputable fact that if you look at the image closely you will be disappointed as far as the relief and color of the face are concerned. (In close-up photographs, the face appears devoid of perspective, flat and rough in execution.) But contemplating it from about two meters it seems as if the gray and the apparently agglutinated white pigment of the face and hands, combined with the surface to "collect" the light and refract the olive tone of the complexion towards the distance. Such a technique seems to be an impossible achievement for human hands, although nature frequently offers it to us in the arrangement of bird feathers,
As he moves away, the overwhelming beauty of the Lady emerges as if by enchantment. She is the face of such beauty and of such singular execution, that it is inexplicable for the current state of science ».
About this beauty of the Virgin, which so impresses the scientists Smith and Callagan, Dr. Amado Jorge Kúri, an eminent surgeon and specialist in internal medicine, who has also closely studied the image, says: «In my long life as a professional I have had the opportunity to see thousands of human beings, of all classes and conditions, but I have never come across one so delicate and suggestive». That this special beauty, attested to by many, does not appear in the reproductions is partly explained by the aforementioned retouching, and by its special analyzed technique of decomposition of light, which photography can hardly capture. Perhaps one day a perfect photograph of the original without retouching can be obtained.
Although these have been able to confuse even Smith and Callagan, but the most accurate thing seems to be that the features of the image do not represent a young Indian woman, but a Jewish one; even the clothing is.
To say it all, we will also indicate that several doctors have pointed out the idea that the Stma. Virgin appears to be about three months pregnant (it would be at the time of the birth of S. John the Baptist); with the Child Jesus not in her arms but in her bosom. Curiously, the teacher Alfonso Junco already said: «She wanted to visit us, as she would have visited her cousin Sta. Isabel in her pregnancy, when these lands were pregnant with Christ, and she accelerated His birth».
THE EYES: The last of the prodigious phenomena discovered is the content of the eyes, a technical filigree of the brilliant artist, which not only was not painted by human hands, but it would have been absolutely impossible for the men of the 16th century to do so, with the knowledge of the time.
In 1929 the official photographer of the basilica, Alfonso Marcué González, discovered that the eyes of the Virgin reflected the bust of a bearded man, but the abbot of the basilica did not want anything to be said, perhaps because of the religious persecution at the time. In 1951 José Carlos Salinas Chávez, cartoonist, news reporter of the phenomenon, examined it again, insisted with the aforementioned abbot and with the archbishop, the finding was made public and the scientific analysis began by the most prestigious oculists with magnifying glasses and high-quality ophthalmoscopes. power. There can be no doubt, as Dr. Rafael Torija Lavoignet discovered in 1956: they reflect an image according to the Purkinje-Samsom optical law. This says that an object placed 35 or 40 cm in front of the eye produces three images: one on the outer face of the cornea (in front of the iris),
Those three images of a bust of a man with a beard can be seen in the right eye of the image; in the left eye the first image appears alone, more external in the cornea, because the object is less in front of the eye, and for this reason it does not produce the other two images. From an optical point of view, the diversity, placement, curvature and focus of the images in both eyes is perfect: the one in the left eye is somewhat out of focus, because it is further away from the man with the beard. This anatomical perfection surpasses all human technique!
In addition, according to the unanimous testimony of ophthalmologists, when the eye is illuminated, the iris becomes bright, giving the impression of being a living eye, and the pupil of being somewhat hollow. This effect of life, and three-dimensionality in the black spot of the pupil, is of course not found in any other painting in the world, nor is it possible to achieve it with any painting.
The eyes are slightly slanted to the right and downward. His realism is such that Dr. Enrique Graue, absorbed in his observation, forgot that he was in front of a painting and said to him, like one of his patients: "Please look up a bit." ». Its color is green to brown, like yellowish green.
MORE FIGURES:Professor José Aste Tonsmann, Peruvian, is a specialist in image digitization processes at the IBM Science Center in Mexico. Through complicated devices and computers, the light that reflects a photograph is converted into electrical impulses and these are reduced to numbers (giving the number that corresponds, according to its characteristics, to each little square or digit into which the image is divided, and they become 28,000 for each square millimeter) and then, when reconstructed, it can be enlarged up to 2,500 times its size (a square passport photo, which is 5 ctms on a side, can become a square of 2 and a half meters on a side); Furthermore, the computer can distinguish more than 250 shades of gray, while the human eye cannot distinguish more than 40.
Well then, Dr. Tonsmann, a good Catholic, interested in the Virgin of Guadalupe, applied this image processing to her eyes in 1979. In the center of the pupils of both eyes —and something different in each one, as it happens in reality—, they have been detected: a figure with Indian features without a beard, with a hat in the shape of a cone which spreads a blanket in front of it (undoubtedly Juan Diego), to his right a face of a young man (it has been supposed to be the translator, because he was between the Indian and the bishop; it was Juan González Sánchez, twenty-something years old, from Extremadura who had arrived three years ago, who ordained as a priest in 1534), an old man's head (of Bishop Zumárraga due to his age, Basque skull and nose, bald head with Franciscan-style bangs...), and to his right another almost naked Indian, seated in the Aztec style; behind Juan Diego, a woman's face, with black features, looking at the prodigy (it was later confirmed that the bishop had a black slave, to whom he granted freedom in his will). Naturally, the computers also analyzed the "man with a beard", which he caresses with his right hand (he does not have Indian characteristics, he would be a Spaniard, perhaps D. Sebastián Ramírez de Fuenteleal, bishop of Santo Domingo, who arrived in Mexico in October 1531 as president of the Audiencia of New Spain, —government and judicial body then made up of five oidores of great prestige and integrity—; and quite possibly he stayed at the residence of Bishop Zumárraga). —government and judicial body then made up of five oidores of great prestige and integrity—; and very possibly stayed at the residence of Bishop Zumárraga). —government and judicial body then made up of five oidores of great prestige and integrity—; and very possibly stayed at the residence of Bishop Zumárraga).
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