Saint Lucy (NGA Washington)

This 1637 Saint Lucy at the National Gallery of Art in Washington depicts the Syracusan virgin martyr carrying her eyes on a plate—her traditional attribute recalling her blinding during persecution. Like other female saints in Zurbarán's oeuvre, she wears contemporary Spanish dress of considerable elegance. Francisco de Zurbarán, working primarily for the great religious institutions of Seville and Extremadura, was the most important painter of Spanish Counter-Reformation devotional art outside Velázquez's specific domain. His distinctive treatment of religious figures — the sculptural weight of cloth, the specific quality of Spanish late-afternoon light on faces, the complete absence of sentimentality — gave his saints a spiritual gravity that served the theological requirements of post-Trent Catholicism. The austerity of his manner, its reduction of the religious figure to an almost abstract presence of devotional intensity, connects Spanish devotional practice to the medieval heritage of contemplative prayer.

The full-length figure is dressed in rich fabrics rendered with meticulous textile realism, the floral patterns of the skirt especially vivid. The gruesome attribute of the eyes is presented with matter-of-fact naturalism that heightens its disturbing effect.