The Image Itself Has Been Studied, and the Studies Are Disputed

The tilma bearing the image venerated at the Guadalupe basilica has been the subject of repeated scientific and forensic examination over the centuries, and claims made about it are numerous and contested: some investigators have reported that the coarse maguey fibre cloth shows no sign of the deterioration expected after nearly five centuries, others have disputed how carefully controlled or independently verified those specific examinations actually were, and a widely circulated claim that tiny figures can be seen reflected in the eyes of the image when magnified has drawn both enthusiastic support from some researchers and sharp methodological criticism from others who argue the effect is an artefact of the analysis technique rather than a genuine feature of the paint or fabric.

No fully independent, methodologically uncontested scientific study resolving these competing claims has been published in a way that has settled the matter for specialists outside the community of researchers already inclined to support the image's miraculous status, so that the tilma remains, more than most venerated religious images, a live subject of specifically physical and forensic dispute rather than only theological or historical disagreement, with believers and sceptics each able to point to some body of prior investigation supporting their own view of what the examinations actually show.