Secondo Pia (9 September 1855 – 7 September 1941) was an Italian lawyer and amateur photographer. He is best known for taking the first photographs of the Shroud of Turin on 28 May 1898 and, when he was developing them, noticing that the photographic negatives showed a positive image of the man in the shroud in addition to a clearer rendition of the image. The image he obtained from the shroud has been approved by the Roman Catholic Church as part of the devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus. Pia was born in Asti, Piedmont, and was an attorney who was also interested in art and science. In the early 1870s he began to explore the new technology of photography, and by the 1890s he was a city councilor and a member of Turin's Amateur Photographers' Club. He became a well known photographer in Turin, and examples of his other photographs are now part of the historical collection at the Turin Cinema Museum. Pia can be considered a pioneer in the field of photography for using electric lightbulbs in the 1890s, as lightbulbs were a novelty in the late nineteenth century, with Thomas Edison's reliable incandescent light bulb having been invented in 1879. The accidental photographer It was by accident that Secondo Pia unwittingly took the first step in the field of modern sindonology (the formal study of the shroud of Turin). In 1898 the city of Turin was celebrating the 400th anniversary of Turin Cathedral along with the 50th anniversary of Italy's Statuto Albertino constitution of 1848 in favor of the House of Savoy. As part of the celebration, a sacred art exhibition was planned. Since a public display of the shroud would have required permission from King Umberto I of Italy, who owned it, plans were made for two artists to paint realistic replicas of the shroud to be used instead. These paintings were made, but they were never used as part of the exhibition. The head of the Shroud Commission, Baron Manno, petitioned the king for a public display and also asked for the right to photograph the shroud – with the help of Secondo Pia – to promote the exhibition. The king approved the public display of the shroud for the exhibition and later also allowed for it to be photographed. At that time the House of Savoy was based in Turin, and the shroud