Secondo Pia

The image he obtained from the shroud has been approved by the Roman Catholic Church as part of the devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus.

In the early 1870s he began to explore the new technology of photography, and by the 1890s he was a city councilor and a member of Turin's Amateur Photographers' Club.

It was by accident that Secondo Pia unwittingly took the first step in the field of modern sindonology (the formal study of the shroud of Turin).

Two other people, Father Sanno Salaro and the head of cathedral security, Lieutenant Felice Fino, were also present and took part in the photography.

The logistics of organizing the photographic session and the required equipment were a challenge to Pia, but he managed to set up two electric lamps of about 1000 candelas each.

He managed to make a few exposures in the resulting heat before the session was interrupted by the opening of the cathedral doors after the noon closure.

In the meantime, King Umberto I of Italy, whose permission was instrumental for the Pia photograph, was assassinated in July 1900 and did not see the full story unfold.

On the occasion of the 100th year of Secondo Pia's first photograph, on 24 May 1998, Pope John Paul II visited Turin Cathedral.

[5] On the scientific front, in 2004 the optical journal of the Institute of Physics in London published a reviewed article[6] on new imaging techniques applied to the shroud during its restoration in 2002.