The human face of the Man of the Shroud allows to verify, from the computer studies perspective, the correspondence the historic-iconographic research claims between this face and the most important icons representing Christ.

In order to compare them in the most direct way, it was obtained a straight and frontal representation of the face in fig.6 by a rotoscalamento transformation which led to fig. 13.

Some of the most important and well-known icons of Christ, starting from the V^th century, have been later converted numerically to make a comparative analysis with the three dimensional, frontal and woundless image.

The representations taken into account were: the Mandylion Christ (VI^th century) represented in fig. 14, the Christ at St. Sofia church in Thessaloniki (VII^th century) represented in fig. 15, the Christ Pantocrator in Dafni (XI^th century), the blessing Christ at Monreale Cathedral (XII^th century), the Christ by Meliore Toscano (XIII^th century) and the Christ at Chilandari Monastery (XIII^th century).

The features of the several faces of Christ represented in these icons have been obtained by the so called “Sobel” operator algorithm that automatically gives the transition lines that are at the borders of structures different in brightness gradations; the forms of the nasal pyramid, brow arches, orbital areas, lips and the more general structure have been obtained this way. The comparison of superposition of the different icon faces of Christ shows there are common features making believe His image could have been passed on along the centuries (fig. 16).

The peculiar features have been later on superimposed onto the frontal, woundless three dimensional image of the Man of the Shroud. Fig. 17 shows this superimposition of the face of the Man of the Shroud and of the outlines of the icon in fig. 14, whereas fig. 18 compares the outlines of fig. 13.

Results show there are many similarities and it seems therefore very likely the face of the Man of the Shroud was the inspiring prototype for christian iconography from the VI^th century on.