The Burial of Saint Lucy
The original, as its museum records it
Every line above is reproduced from the holding institution’s own catalogue entry, which is linked. Where their title, date or attribution differs from ours, theirs is the one printed here.
The file this print is made from
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About this painting
Lucy's throat carries a thin cut, not a severed head. X-rays show Caravaggio first painted her decapitated, then painted it out, trading Greek martyrdom for a Latin one. A bishop, taken as San Marziano, Syracuse's first bishop, blesses her, giving last communion.
Above them the canvas empties into bare stone: the crypt where Paul once preached, some say; others, the ancient quarries. Two gravediggers, huge against the mourners, do the labor themselves.
Tradition credits Syracuse's Senate with commissioning it in October 1608, on view by Lucy's December feast, though no commission document survives. Caravaggio had fled toward Messina.
Sources: diagnostic imaging: the throat wound is a repainted decapitation · Athanor, citing Zuccari and Marini · the Senate of Syracuse as the commonly cited patron, October 1608, shown for Lucy's feast on 13 December — and that no commission document has been traced · Howard Hibbard, Caravaggio (1985)
Printed on demand. Public-domain masterwork, reproduced from a 15,196 px master of the original. The whole image is printed — never cropped to fit the sheet — so every sheet carries an archival margin, and the dimensions and resolution listed above are the ones you receive.