Volto Santo of Lucca

The Holy Face of Lucca (Italian: Volto Santo di Lucca) is a venerated wooden (body) of a crucifix in Lucca, Italy. 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.

The present Holy Face itself is an early 13th-century copy of the original ascribed to the circle of Benedetto Antelami. It appears that 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 cannot be securely documented until about 1100 although Abbot Leofstan of Bury St Edmunds Abbey, who died in 1065, recorded that the inspiration for a life-size crucifix he had made for Bury St Edmunds was one he saw at Lucca on his way to Rome.

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. The tempietto stands in the right-hand nave of the cathedral of San Martino in Lucca, Italy.

Copies of a similar size from the 12th century are found widely spread across Europe. These include the Cross of Imervard in the Brunswick Cathedral at Braunschweig, Germany, the Holy Face of Sansepolcro at Sansepolcro, Italy and possibly the Batlló Crucifix of Barcelona, Spain.

In the traditional account, the year 742 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 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.

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