The Catholic Encyclopaedia describes a relic as "some object, notably part of the body or clothes, remaining as a memorial of a departed saint." Reliquaries all over the world house these 'artefacts' from deified individuals and there is global attention when new ones are discovered. But it’s not just religious luminaries who get the cold case treatment. Cultural heroes attract the same engrossment should a long dead limb or physical remnant be unearthed.

Be it Mozart’s skull, Beethoven’s hairs, or Walt Whitman’s brain, bits and pieces from our artistic forefathers frequently find themselves rushed off to the lab for detailed DNA analysis. Just what do we think we’ll uncover?

Sometimes the impetus is classically forensic: determine cause of death in cases where it has never been clear-cut. Cultural icon King Tut is perhaps the most famous cold case of this ilk – scientists’ still fuss about mummified remains to find who or what killed the Egyptian boy king.

Beethoven is another. A lock of the late composer's hair was taken after death by a young Jewish musician named Ferdinand Hiller, and found its way into the hands of various families over the centuries. In 1994 it was auctioned at Sotheby's in London, then passed to scientists in Chicago who ran the artefact (along with some skull fragments) through the most powerful X-ray beam in the Western Hemisphere to ascertain how he died. The answer: most likely, lead poisoning. But Dr. William J. Walsh, Director of the Beethoven Research Project, made a telling statement in a press conference announcing the find. Says Walsh: “Four years ago, I was asked to head a research project to analyze strands of Beethoven's hair to search for clues which might help explain the many mysteries surrounding the great composer's life.” The doctor’s reference to multiple ‘mysteries’ suggests a line of inquiry that transcends mere forensics.

When American poet Walt Whitman died in 1892, his brain was sent to the American Anthropometric Society for study. Studied for what, we’ll never know, as a lab assistant reportedly dropped the organ on the floor, squashing it.

A skull, reputedly Mozart's own, was unearthed ten years after the composer's death by a gravedigger. Scientists have been performing various tests on the skull since 1902, when the object ended up in the International Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg. They were looking to confirm identity and possible causes of death, but investigations also considered the makings of Mozart’s genius, as if they were any more quanitifable beyond the grave than in life.

As recently as January this year, scientists were going public with their latest revelations in a documentary about the skull. Sadly, the revelations amounted to: 'we’re still not sure.' But rather than let sleeping legends lie, the lack of answers seemed only to fuel curiousity, researcher Dr Walther Parson pronouncing that: "For the time being, the mystery of the skull is even bigger.” With this year's 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth inspiring a newly invigorated storm of speculation about Mozart's life and death, the ‘mystery’ is downright huge.

Author and expert on the archaeology of cultural icons, Deborah Hayden points to other ‘unusual examples’ of cultural relic making: “Beethoven's ears were hacked out and soon went missing. Rene Descartes's middle finger was stolen. (His head was also separated from his body for shipping a philosopher's in-joke, since Descartes introduced the mind/ body split into Western philosophy.) … Josef Haydn's head was stolen by phrenologists at his burial.”

So what’s behind this obsession with the dead of renown. “We live in a society that is familiar with heart transplantation but which also embraces traditions of relic possession, in the Church and other institutions,” says artist and designer Jane Wildgoose, speaking at a forum on the body and death in contemporary culture at London’s Institute of Ideas.

“Human remains are often presented as potent symbols of identity and memory,” adds fellow speaker, GP and author Michael Fitzpatrick GP, suggesting the renewed preoccupation with body parts after life may be linked to our current fetishisation of the body in life, producing “morbid and persistent bereavement reactions that focus upon maintaining the integrity of the corpse.” (His point about fetishisation aptly illustrated in the bizarre case of modern celebrities bronzing and selling their "body parts", albeit for a good cause).

Experts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art give another clue in their discussion of medieval Christian relics: “Relics were more than mementos…The body of the saint provided a spiritual link between life and death, between man and God. Because of the grace remaining in the martyr, they were an inestimable treasure for the holy congregation of the faithful."

Are Mozart, Beethoven, Whitman and kind cultural 'saints'? Are we ascribing great artists, who touch millions through their work, the qualities (and, accordingly, the cultural protocols) of a saint who demonstrates great charity and heroic virtue?

The notion that we can pin down the DNA of artistic accomplishment feels as though it should have died out with Victorian phrenology. But the cases above suggest we haven’t given up hope we can find, and perhaps even ‘bottle’ creative genius. The quest itself seemingly drawing us into an even more intimate relationship with the subject – if we can touch, dissect and display a fragment of the individual, we inch closer to getting ‘inside’ their mind and soul.

Our legacy of preservation, appetite for celebrity and budding lust for CSI-style detecting all but ensures new 'relics' from our artists will surface to command attention. Witness the recent titilation over a possible forensic 3D image of Shakespeare's face. Not quite a skull, but a virtual relic the same. Let’s hope the lives and works of legends benefit from the glare.