Santa Luzia (Chartres)

Zurbaran painted this for a barefoot Mercedarian convent in Seville, in the years around 1637 when he was the city's leading painter of monks and saints. Lucy was an early Christian martyr from Sicily, and the story held that her eyes were put out during her torture. So the young woman here, dressed in the rich silks and pearls of a fashionable Seville lady, calmly carries a small tin plate, and on it sit two eyes that seem to look back at us even though her own are lowered. In her other hand she holds the palm given to martyrs. Zurbaran made a whole series of these virgin saints as elegant contemporary women. This one was bought by the Chartres museum at a Paris sale in 1876.