Saint Lucy
The martyr of Syracuse, patron of sight, carrying the eyes taken from her.
- Work
- Oil on canvas (relined)
- Artist / creator
- Cusco School (attributed)
- Origin & date
- Peru (probably Cuzco), 18th century
- Held by
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York — The American Wing (bequest of William S. Lieberman, 2005)
Format
The full-resolution scan — yours to print, study, and keep.
Size
$24.00
The story
Lucy is traditionally shown holding a small dish or plate bearing her own eyes — the instrument of her martyrdom in the legend and, ever after, her identifying attribute, since she became the patron saint invoked against blindness. That grim, specific iconography traveled essentially unchanged from Sicily into the colonial Andes, carried by the same imported print sources that supplied most Cusco School saint portraits.
Compared to the tradition's great gold-leaf Virgins, a single-saint devotional portrait like this is modest in scale and ambition — likely made for a private home altar rather than a church, one of thousands of similar small saint portraits that furnished colonial Andean domestic life.
A reminder that this tradition's output was not only spectacle — it was also the ordinary furniture of everyday belief.
About this reproduction
- • Faithful reproduction of a public-domain work, sourced from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York — The American Wing (bequest of William S. Lieberman, 2005)’s open-access release.
- • Printed to order on EMA matte art paper, 200gsm. The heirloom frame is gold, under acrylic, with no mount.
- • Color-managed to the source scan.
- • Ships in 5–9 business days; satisfaction guarantee.
From the same collection
Christ Carrying the Cross, called "The Lord of the Fall"
Christ collapsed under the weight of the cross — one of the tradition's most devastating images.
Adam and Eve in Paradise
Genesis, rendered as an Andean garden — the first sin, before the fall.
Emblem of Folly
A moral allegory from the private, non-religious side of Cusco School painting.