A portrait of the Virgin Mary that is "not manmade"

In Tyrol, Austria, on January 17, 1797, between 3 and 4 pm, 18-year-old Rosina Bucher, from the small town of Absam, saw an image of a beautiful young woman in a windowpane at her parents’ house.

After undergoing scientific tests, the image was declared to bear no trace of external influence or to show any difference in the nature of the smooth glass surface. It was possible to remove the pattern by washing the glass, but it reappeared very quickly, after the glass begins to tarnish. Chemical substances could not erase the portrait permanently.

The population transferred the icon to the village parish Church of Saint Michael, now the most important Marian pilgrimage church in the Tyrol. Pope Saint John Paul II raised the church to a basilica in 2000.

The portrait is more like an Expressionist woodcut in black and white than a photograph. Unlike the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe whose mantle covers her hair parted in the middle, a double veil covers the head of Our Lady of Absam. The mantle is enveloped in sun rays; and the veil, by a halo.

Sudarium Christi and Sacred Destinations