Sul Volto Santo di Bocca di Magra
Piero Donati
The imposing wooden Volto Santo, which has been kept near the mouth of the river Magra since the mid-XVII century, does not originate from the one venerated in Lucca, as it is more ancient. Instead, by rereading Boncompagno da Signa’s Rhetorica Antiqua and thanks to numismatics, one can infer that it was on this cult image that the lucchese devotions for the Santa Croce and the Volto di Cristo converged. The image’s original elements were made by a sculptor trained in Northern Europe, where the devotion for the Volto Santo took root in the following centuries, after an early circulation in the French and Catalan areas.