Holy Face of Lucca

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Fresco of the Translation of the Volto Santo, San Frediano, Lucca
Fresco of the Translation of the Volto Santo, San Frediano, Lucca

The Holy Face of Lucca (Volto Santo di Lucca) is the venerated wooden corpus of a crucifix, located in the free-standing octagonal Carrara marble chapel (the tempietto or "little temple"), which was built by the famous Early Renaissance sculptor of Lucca, Matteo Civitali, in 1484 to contain it; the image in its tempietto stands in the right-hand nave of the Cathedral of San Martino, Lucca. Medieval legends stated that it had been sculpted by that Nicodemus who assisted Joseph of Arimathea in depositing Christ in the tomb and specifically dated its arrival in Lucca to AD 742. Dante mentions the Volto Santo of Lucca in his work Inferno, Canto XXI, where a demon cries:

Qui non ha luogo il Volto Santo!
qui si nuota altrimenti che nel Serchio.[1]

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[edit] History

The year 742 marks the arrival of the Volto Santo 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[2] 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. Luni was a Byzantine possession that had been sacked by Saracens, disputed between Byzantines and Lombards, and reduced to a village by the eighth century. The sculpture bears no stylistic relationship to Lombard sculpture of the tenth or eleventh century, however. The iconography of a completely robed crucified Christ wearing 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.[3]

The Legend of the Volto Santo and the fiddler. 16th century woodcut by Hans Burgkmair
The Legend of the Volto Santo and the fiddler. 16th century woodcut by Hans Burgkmair

In Lucca, an annual candlelit procession, the Luminara, is devoted to the Volto Santo on 13 September, the eve of religious celebrations on the following day. The procession, which today no longer includes the sculpture as in the past, walks to the cathedral from Basilica of San Frediano, where a fresco cycle commemorates the legend of Nicodemus' sculpting the image from cedar of Lebanon, during which, having completed all but the face, Nicodemus slept, awaking to find the Holy Face completed by an angel. In Eastern Christianity, similar legends accrue round icons said to be acheiropoieta, "not made by human hands"[4]. 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.[5] But the men of Luni, when they tried to board the boat, found that it retreated miraculously from their grasp. Warned by an angel in a revelatory dream that the Volto Santo had arrived in Luni, Johannes, bishop of Lucca, with his clerics and a great crowd of Lucchesi, arrived at Luni, bid a stop to the attempts to retrieve the boat and, by calling upon God, found that the ship came miraculously to Johannes and opened to him its gangplank. When the people saw the Volto Santo they wept tears of joy and cried Gloria in excelsis[6] Once ashore, the legend brings the image to Lucca in a cart pulled by oxen with no driver, in a further miraculous demonstration of the "rightness" of its possession by the city of Lucca, and having been deposited in the church of San Frediano, it is miraculously translated to the church of San Martino, which was interpreted as the rationale for choosing this church as the cathedral. Thus the possession of the image by Lucca rather than Luni, and its location in its rightful church, were both justified by legend.

Its popularity was expressed in copies as well as legends, to satisfy the pilgrims who made the cathedral of Lucca the goal of their voyages from all parts of Europe. "By the face of Lucca" was the 'customary oath' of William II of England.[7] The present Volto Santo itself is an early thirteenth-century copy of the original, that is ascribed to the circle of Benedetto Antelami.[8] It appears the original was chipped away beyond repair by relic-seeking pilgrims. The earliest copies date from the early twelfth century, which may suggest that the original in fact dates only from the 11th century. Its presence in Lucca can only be securely documented from about 1100. Copies of a similar size from the 12th century are found widely spread across Europe, from North Germany and Sweden to Catalonia. The long robe may be a Byzantine influence, although many Western examples also exist, in Ottonian illuminated manuscripts and other media. The belt of the Volto Santo is unprecedented in a Crucifixion from either East or West.[9]

At the end of the fourteenth century, such a Holy Face inspired miracles and veneration in the Low Countries, Bavaria and the Tyrol[10] , though its connection with Lucca had been forgotten. The long robe appeared to signify a woman, and to account for the beard, a saint was supposed, who, in order to maintain her virginity against the wishes of her father that she marry a king of Sicily, was granted a miraculous beard, rendering her unmarriageable, upon which occasion her father had her crucified. This saint assumed various local names: Sankt Wilgefortis or Kümmernis in Germany or Sainte Débarras in France,[11] and was duly entered in the Martyrologium Romanum in 1583, retaining a devoted following as late as the nineteenth century.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ "Here the Volto Santo has no place! Here you swim otherwise than in the Serchio"— in boiling pitch, rather than in the Serchio, the river of Lucca.
  2. ^ The author, Leboino or Leobino appears to date from the late eleventh or early twelfth century. ("Il Volto Santo e la Sindone").
  3. ^ David Talbot-Rice, Byzantine Art, 3rd edn 1968, Penguin Books Ltd, pp. 417-9
  4. ^ sanctissimum Vultum non sua sed arte divina disculpsit, according to the Latin legend: "the most holy Face, sculpted not by his craft but divine."
  5. ^ Compare the miraculous translation of Saint James to Hispania or the legend of the Three Maries.
  6. ^ The Latin hagiography.
  7. ^ Bosanquet, G. (tr.), Eadmer's History of Recent Events in England, Cresset, 1964, p. 31. Eadmer was a well placed observer: see ibid., pp. ix-x. See also William of Malmesbury, in e.g. A History of the Norman Kings (1066 - 1125), Llanerch, 1989, p.63; and Schaff, Philip, History of the Christian Church, Volume V: The Middle Ages (for which see http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/history/5_ch03.htm).
  8. ^ R. Hausherr in Engelbert Kirschbaum (ed.) and others, Lexikon der christliche Ikonographie vol. 4.
  9. ^ G Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, Vol. II,1972 (English trans from German), Lund Humphries, London, p. 144, figs 471-75, ISBN 853313245
  10. ^ See Ilse E. Friesen , The Female Crucifix: Images of St. Wilgefortis Since the Middle Ages. (Waterloo, Ontario:Laurier University Press) 2001
  11. ^ The martyr also bore the local names Ontkommer, Hülpe, Liberatrix. (Koraljka Kos, "St. Kümmernis and Her Fiddler (An Approach to Iconology of Pictorial Folk Art)" Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 19.1 [1977, pp. 251-266] p 253).

[edit] References

  • Baracchini, C. and A. Caleca, Il Duomo di Lucca, Lucca 1973, pp 14-15.
  • Guerra, Giulio Dante, "La 'leggenda' del Volto Santo di Lucca, Cristianità 10August-September 1982, pp 88-89.
  • Pertusi, A, and F. Pertusi Pucci, "Il Crocifisso ligneo del Monastero di S. Croce e Nicodemo di Bocca di Magra" Rivista dell’Istituto Nazionale d’Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte (1979), pp 3-51.
  • Schnürer, Gustav and Joseph M. Ritz, St. Kümmernis und Volto Santo, Düsseldorf 1934.

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