Professor Andrew Casper is in Turin, Italy for the month of July conducting archival research for his current research project on the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century artistic conception of the Shroud of Turin. He is working at the Archivio di Stato (State Archives) and Biblioteca Reale (Royal Library) uncovering manuscript documents from the 1500s and 1600s that pertain to the contemporary cult of one of Christianity's most mysterious image relics. The Shroud was at that time the prized possession of the dynastic Savoy family who established Turin as their capital in 1578.