Mandylion or Camouliana?

This article by Jean Roberti examines the question of the origin and identity of images of Christ known as "not made by human hands" in the Christian tradition. Drawing on the history of iconography and patristics, the study mobilizes extensive documentation — liturgical, paraliturgical, and Greek and Syriac source texts — to trace the complex history of the Mandylion of Edessa and the icon of Camuliana. The main argument is that the Orthodox tradition, often absent from Western debates on the Shroud of Turin, has favored the Mandylion as the founding image, obscuring the historically more decisive role of the Camuliana in the formation of the canonical portrait of Christ. The contribution of the article is to show, through a critical analysis of the texts, that the image of Camuliana constitutes the probable model for the acheiropoieta icons, and that the question of the origins of Christological iconography remains historically unresolved.