**5. Conclusions**

Our study allowed us to recover the history, understand the technical characteristic of both the structure and the polychromy, and correctly classify the *Señor del Santo Entierro* sculpture, as well as to understand its changes through the centuries. We were able to ascribe the sculpture to the Cortés workshop made around 1580. The analytical techniques showed that the statue suffered several modifications related to the damage produced by the constant use during the liturgical representations of the Holy Friday and to adapt it to the modern aesthetic taste.

As this study has shown, the technological complexity of the low weight maize stem sculptures requires a multianalytical approach, combining non-invasive and micro-invasive methods, to understand the structure and the nature of the materials. These sculpture techniques, which are not confined to Mexico, still require recognition around the world for their correct classification and the understanding of the technical variations according to the regions of productions. The historical investigations shed light on possible trade routes, which required further studies both inside the Mexican territory and in other parts of the Americas and Europe.

**Supplementary Materials:** The following are available online at https://www.mdpi.com/article/10 .3390/heritage4030085/s1, Figure S1: Location of some maize stem sculptures register in Mexico; Figure S2: Sampling scheme; Figure S3: Topogram and tomograms of the upper part of the sculpture; Figure S4: SEM-EDX mapping of sample SSE-1, SSE-2, and SSE-5.

**Author Contributions:** Data curation, D.Q.B.; investigation, D.Q.B. and E.S.-R.; methodology, D.Q.B.; supervision, Á.Z.R.; writing—original draft, D.Q.B.; writing—review and editing, D.Q.B. and Á.Z.R. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** Not applicable.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author.

**Acknowledgments:** We would like to express our gratitude to Genaro Santoscoy and Silvia Serratos for the access to the CT and Nelly Sigaut and Mirta Insaurralde from the Laboratorio de Análisis y Diagnóstico del Patrimonio (LADiPA-COLMICH) for the access to the microscopy techniques. We would also like to thank Rocco Mazzeo from the M2AD laboratory from the University of Bologna for the access to μ-FTIR analysis and Mariangela Vandini and Flavia Fiorillo from the Art Diagnostic laboratory of the University of Bologna for the access to the Raman instrumentation. Thanks to Antonio García Rangel and Tomás de Hijar Ornelas for the access to the sculpture.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

#### **References**

