Interior view

In Tuscany and throughout Central and Southern Italy the surviving non-military architecture of the late fourteenth century consists of often attractive continuations of earlier traditions and of sometimes strange and occasionally distinguished architectural details. One of the most attractive architectural oddities is the internal reconstruction of the Duomo (Cathedral of St. Martin) at Lucca, started in 1372 and finished in the fifteenth century.

The distinctive feature of the design is the system of arcading. It roughly corresponds to the triforium in northern Gothic architecture and runs without a break across the transepts. There are two wide, traceried openings to each bay; the traceries are paper-thin, and the effect already striking in the nave, becomes extraordinary in the unusually wide transepts.

The photo shows the nave with the small octagonal temple or chapel shrine. It contains the most precious relic in Lucca, the Holy Face of Lucca or Sacred Countenance. This cedar-wood crucifix and image of Christ, according to the legend, was carved by his contemporary Nicodemus, and miraculously conveyed to Lucca in 782. Christ is clothed in the colobium, a long sleeveless garment. The chapel was built in 1484 by Matteo Civitale, the most famous Luccan sculptor of the early Renaissance.