7. Perhaps the Shroud Was Made by a Medieval Embalmer
Embalmers have long had expertise in understanding death and how the human body changes in distinct phases following death. One theory postulates that if a painter did not create the image on the shroud, then it must have been formed by an embalmer in the fourteenth century. Perhaps someone with a particularly macabre bent would have taken a recently dead body and subjected it to the wounds of crucifixion, then laid the piece of linen over the body to create the image. He then might have figured that he could become rich by selling it to the wealthy de Charny family, convincing its master that he would be in possession of the funeral shroud of Jesus Christ.
The problem with this theory is that there are precise details on the shroud that cannot be explained by this theory. For example, there are some anatomical parts, such as the eye sockets and hair details, that would not have come into direct contact with the shroud. Had an embalmer pressed the cover down to force these different details to come into contact with the shroud, the image would have been distorted. The embalmer theory, while seemingly plausible at face value, is not capable of explaining the remarkable forgery behind the Shroud of Turin.