Holy Face of Lucca

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

[1][2][3] The Holy Face is located in the free-standing octagonal Carrara marble chapel (the tempietto or "little temple"), which was built in 1484 by Matteo Civitali, the sculptor-architect of Lucca, to contain it.

[5] "By the Holy Face of Lucca" was a phrase often used by William Rufus when swearing to perform an act or deed during his reign as King of England.

In the traditional account, the year 782 marks the arrival of the Holy Face in the Basilica di San Frediano; its transferral to the cathedral, justified by a miraculous translation in the Latin legend, De inventione, revelatione ac translatione Sanctissimi Vultus (or Leggenda di Leobino)[6] may be connected with the episcopacy of Anselmo da Baggio (1060–70), who presented it at the consecration of the new Romanesque cathedral, 6 October 1070.

Insistent details of the hagiographic legend (see below) also suggest that the image had previously been at Luni in Liguria, the former see of a bishopric and the early commercial rival of Lucca.

The iconography of a completely robed crucified Christ wearing a colobium—an ankle-length tunic—is more familiar in the East than in the West, although a near life-size Crucifixion, carved in the round, is contrary to Byzantine norms.

[9] Discovered in a cave in the Holy Land by "Bishop Gualfredo", who was guided by a revelatory dream, the image was carried first to the Tuscan port of Luni in a boat without sails or crew.

Dante mentions the Holy Face of Lucca in his Inferno, Canto XXI, where a demon cries: A legend of a fiddler devotee of the statue receiving a shoe in precious metal, with a number of variants in the story, is first recorded from the 12th century.

[15] At the end of the fourteenth century, such a Holy Face inspired miracles and veneration in the Low Countries, Bavaria and the Tyrol,[16] though its connection with Lucca had been forgotten.

As a result, she assumed various local names including Kümmernis in Germany or Sainte Débarras in France,[17] and was duly entered in the Martyrologium Romanum in 1583, retaining a devoted following as late as the nineteenth century.