Holy Face of Lucca

The Holy Face of Lucca (Italian: Volto Santo di Lucca) is an 8th-century life-size Crucifix of painted wood in the cathedral of San Martino, Lucca, Italy. Medieval legends state that it was sculpted by Nicodemus who assisted St. Joseph of Arimathea in placing Christ in his tomb after the crucifixion. The same legends placed its miraculous arrival in Lucca to 782.

Radiocarbon dating of both wood and canvas places it between 770–880, which corresponds to the Legend of Leobino according to which the Holy Face arrived in Lucca from the region of Judea in 782 (another copy says 742).

The Holy Face is housed in the free-standing octagonal tempietto ("little temple") in the left-hand aisle of Lucca Cathedral. The sacristy of Carrara marble was built for the purpose in 1484 by Matteo Civitali, the sculptor-architect of Lucca.

Copies of a similar size –the Volto Santo measures eight-foot-tall (2.4 m)– from the 12th century are found widely spread across Europe. These include the Cross of Imervard in Brunswick Cathedral (Braunschweig, Germany), the Holy Face of Sansepolcro (Sansepolcro, Italy) and possibly the Batlló Crucifix of Barcelona, Spain. The Holy Face is also depicted on a 14th-cent Gothic fresco in a Lutheran church in Štítnik, Slovakia.

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