A lengthy and complex restoration of the Volto Santo (Holy Face), the monumental polychrome wooden crucifix preserved for more than a thousand years in Lucca Cathedral, has just been presented and the results are breathtaking. The project revealed extensive information about the sculpture’s construction techniques and materials and uncovered the remarkable polychromy hidden beneath a dark overpainting, restoring the Volto Santo to the appearance it had between the ninth and seventeenth centuries. The Holy Face of Lucca is one of the three oldest surviving wooden crucifixes in the West, and the best preserved: every diagnostic study undertaken has confirmed a ninth-century date.
The restoration, made necessary by the sculpture’s deteriorated condition, was directed by the Department of Polychrome Wooden Sculpture at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure and it more than three years: after the complex relocation and a diagnostic campaign in 2022–2023, the conservation itself followed took from 2023 to now in 2025. The scientific studies in the first phase were used, of course, to guide difficult choices like separating the figure of Christ from the cross to allow access to the interior, and removing the surface layer of pigmented wax and the later repainting—black on the tunic and brick-red on the flesh—that covered the Volto Santo and its cross.
The polychromy of Christ and the Cross
Beneath the dark overpaint applied from the seventeenth century onwards—unevenly across the sculpture and the cross—the flesh tones of Christ’s face, hands, and feet were revealed, along with gilded decoration on the sleeves and hem of the tunic, the refined gilding of the neckline (possibly fifteenth century), and the yellow-brown of the hair and beard. The tunic is now once again a deep blue, painted with high-quality lapis lazuli that survives in good condition. Beneath this layer were traces of two further applications of the same color. Stratigraphic analysis shows that both the blue and the gilding of the garment were renewed over time. On the cross, itself as old as the figure and also repeatedly repainted, a gold-leaf “alpha and omega” on a blue ground was uncovered, together with evidence of at least two earlier polychromies in red and blue, enriched with decorative bands and palmette motifs.
The eyes of Christ
The restoration also produced a striking discovery: the glass paste used for the eyes of the Volto Santo was made by remelting Roman glass. The deep blue pupils were already visible, but the white of the sclera had been covered with a nineteenth-century zinc-white paint layer, which has now been removed. The sclera of the left eye had a lacuna, which was reintegrated with resin. The intervention restored to the Volto Santo the profound expressiveness of its gaze—that penetrating look described since antiquity as terribilis. It is the only surviving wooden sculpture of its time to preserve glass-paste eyes.
Separating Christ from the cross
The non-destructive separation of Christ from his contemporary cross revealed the construction techniques and the wood species employed. It also made it possible to identify the original anchoring system—six pegs of oak and cedar—and to design a new metal support. The Volto Santo, including head and legs, was carved from a single walnut trunk. The head, which projects markedly from the body, was carved from the root section, while the legs correspond to the crown end. The figure is hollowed along its entire back, as was customary in wooden sculpture to reduce thickness and limit harmful expansion of the wood; the nape is closed with a wooden cover, once lined with red fabric, where relics were probably kept. The cross was made from two different woods: the vertical shaft of chestnut, and the horizontal beam of silver fir.
The nimbus with 384 glass-paste gems
The large nimbus (whose dating is still under study), which surrounds the Volto Santo in a semicircle about 240 cm in diameter, was also covered by a thick, darkened vegetal gum layer. It can now be admired in its full splendor: on a wooden base are mounted fourteen silver plates, repoussé and chased with cherubim, framed by gilded ribs in relief, and set with 384 glass-paste gems in vivid emerald green and ruby red, each centered with a four-petaled silver flower. At the lower ends are two lilies in gilded copper sheet.
Confirming the dating
In 2020, to mark the 950th anniversary of the refoundation of Lucca Cathedral, three walnut samples from the Volto Santo and a piece of canvas were subjected for the first time to radiocarbon analysis by the National Institute for Nuclear Physics in Florence. The results gave a date between the late eighth and late ninth centuries. Until then, scholars had considered the Volto Santo a twelfth-century work, a copy of a lost earlier original. The recent restoration confirmed this chronology: all diagnostic results point to the ninth century. In particular, dendrochronological analysis of the wood of the cross, conducted by the IBE-CNR Laboratory in Florence, yielded a precise date of 860, with only a small margin of variation.
“This date is confirmed by the type of the Volto Santo,” explains Anna Maria Giusti, art-historical consultant for the Cathedral’s museum and archaeological complex and for the restoration. “It shows close affinities with the Crucifix in Sansepolcro Cathedral, also assigned to the ninth century through radiocarbon dating. A similar date has been identified for a Crucifix preserved in Tancrémont, Belgium, from a Carolingian foundation. Crucifixes of this type, though now lost, are documented in large numbers across the territories of Charlemagne’s empire, of which Lucca became part in 774. It is therefore plausible to consider the Volto Santo as originating within that Carolingian context, the epicenter of an extraordinary artistic flowering.”
Visitor information
From 13 September 2025, the month traditionally dedicated in Lucca to the solemn celebrations of the Holy Cross, the Volto Santo will be shown for the first time following its restoration. It will remain on view until summer 2026 within the restoration site in the Cathedral, offering visitors a unique and unrepeatable opportunity, before being returned to the marble tempietto by Matteo Civitali (currently undergoing restoration following the discovery of ancient frescoes inside), where it has been housed since 1484.
Further information on the Volto Santo see the official website.
