Heilige Lucia

By the 1640s Artemisia Gentileschi was living in Naples, then a huge, crowded city under Spanish rule and one of the busiest art markets in Europe. She was a rare figure for her time, a woman running her own successful workshop and taking commissions from nobles and churches across the city. This picture shows Saint Lucy, an early Christian martyr from Sicily who became the patron of eyesight and, because her name comes from the Latin word for light, of light itself. It belongs to Gentileschi's later years, quieter than the fierce biblical heroines that first made her reputation. She had been painting for more than three decades by then, since her teens in Rome, and would die in Naples about ten years on.