Saint Lucy

Lucy was a young woman of Syracuse, killed in the persecutions under the emperor Diocletian. By the Middle Ages her legend had gained the detail that fixed her in painting for good. Her eyes were put out, and she came to be shown carrying them on a small dish, which is how she became the saint people prayed to about their sight. Artemisia Gentileschi hands her the palm that every martyr carries, and a shallow footed dish held low in the other hand. In the one photograph of this picture that circulates, what lies on the dish cannot be made out. The painting is in private hands. It surfaced in Paris in 2012, in the Artemisia exhibition at the Musee Maillol, catalogued there as hers without qualification, oil on canvas, 63 by 53 centimetres, painted between 1636 and 1638. She was living in Naples then, where she kept a workshop running for about 25 years.