Throughout its uncommonly long run as an independent republic—from roughly the late 12th century to the coming of Napoleon—the Italian city-state of Lucca had the same image on its coinage. It was customary then for coins to bear the face of the current, secular ruler in their place of origin. But the crowned head on Lucca’s coins was that of the Volto Santo, a wooden, Byzantine-styled, brown-skinned, black-bearded crucified Christ kept in the city’s cathedral. It was said to have been carved by Nicodemus and an angel at the time of Christ, then transported miraculously to Lucca by boat and ox-pulled cart in the eighth century. The earliest historical record of the Volto Santo and its cult, however, coincides with the origins of the republic.
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