13 December
Branded as a “putrid and fetid member” by the Order of the Knights of Malta, Caravaggio escapes and arrives in Syracuse where he is commissioned to paint a canvas for the church of Santa Lucia al Sepolcro.
Santa Lucia is the patron saint of the city and she is also the patron saint of sight, and she is usually represented holding serene a saucer with two eyes.
In reality Lucia is a martyr saint of the third century AD, the time of the most ferocious Christian persecutions. Lucia refused to venerate the Roman gods and for this was tortured. Since the Roman prefect Pangasius was unable to achieve the effect he wanted, humiliated and angry, he decided to behead her. It was 13 December, 304 and Lucia was about 21 years old
Caravaggio does not paint the serene Saint with the saucer in her hand.
He doesn’t even represent the martyrdom but, he opts for the moment of her burial. After all, the church to which the painting was destined had risen precisely on the place considered to be her burial, outside the city center.
The scene takes place in a catacomb or in any case in a bare environment, where the floor is bare soil. In the foreground are the two gravediggers and in particular the back, and the lower back, of one of the two. Lucia is on the ground lifeless. But what dominates is emptiness. Is like the echo of the Syracuse caves is resounding.
We viewers are not invited to the burial. We see it from the opposite side of all those who are entitled to participate.
An absolute masterpiece of Caravaggio’s fundamentalist realism. The “pentimenti” revealed by the analyses are very few. The most relevant is the covering of the wound on the neck of the Saint, initially depicted beheaded. Perhaps it was considered a detail too grisly.
Although the painting subverted all known canons, it was immediately successful.
But it was a bit too empty up there, at least for some. And so a small modification was requested: ” Michelangelo da Caravaggi was requested to paint a group of angels in the wide field, which remains high up, in that famous painting, in which we mourn and admire the funeral of St. Lucia in Syracuse. But he did not want to paint them, saying: Having never seen them, I don’t know how to portray them “
True or not the anecdote, an answer worthy of him.
In the picture: Caravaggio, Seppellimento di Santa Lucia, 1608
