Shown from about the hips up, a young woman with smooth, light skin, rosy cheeks, and dark brown hair stands in front of a dark background holding a pewter plate with two human eyes on it, and a tall palm frond in this vertical painting. She stands with her body and face angled to our right but she looks to our left from the corners of her dark eyes, under dark eyebrows. She has a long, straight nose, and her pink lips are closed. A strong light falls on the woman’s face from our left, leaving the other half of her face in darkness. She wears a crown of ruby-red, buttercup-yellow, shell-pink, and white flowers on her head. A faint gold halo catches the light above the flowers and then is swallowed in shadow. Her dress has a close-fitting, scarlet-red bodice over puffy white, long sleeves. A teal-blue ribbon on her chest frames a gold and red brooch-like medallion. Three strings of white pearls encircle her neck above the neckline. Olive-green fabric that drapes over her left shoulder, farther from us, and around her waist is gathered with a gold brooch at her left hip. In her right hand, closer to us, she holds the pewter plate with two lidded human eyes with dark pupils; they seem to look out at us. In her left hand, she holds a long yellow palm frond, which is bright against the dark brown background. The identify of the woman is written in capital, gold letters in the upper left corner “S. LVCIA.”
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Few images of saints show women as gorgeously attired as Francisco de Zurbarán's. His Saint Lucy portrays the young martyr as a contemporary woman of Seville. Bejeweled and carefully coiffed, she presents her startling attribute, a pair of naturalistically painted eyeballs on a pewter dish.
Multiple versions of the legend of Saint Lucy, the daughter of an aristocratic family in fourth-century Syracuse, arose during the Counter-Reformation. One popular interpretation, inspired by her unusual attribute, maintained that Lucy, determined to dedicate her life to Christ, had plucked out her eyes and sent them to a tenacious suitor after he insisted that their beauty allowed him no peace. Astounded by her devotion to her faith, the admirer converted to Christianity, and Lucy, the legend continues, later found her eyesight miraculously restored one day during prayer. It is possible that the young saint's connection with eyes originated in the Latin source for her name, Lux or "light," which is inextricably linked with vision.
The success of Zurbarán's many images of virgin martyrs derived not only from their inherently pleasing theme -- beautiful, splendidly dressed women -- but also from the artist's gifts as a colorist and his talent for combining the spiritual and material.
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