something is wrong with this picture

[cimorene]

So St. Lucy is famous because when she was betrothed to a non-Christian, she vowed she would never marry him, and gouged out her own eyes and sent them to him as proof. Her eyes then grew back, of course, and she subsequently sold her brideclothes to raise money to feed the homeless of the city and moved into the catacombs with them, where she became their leader with a crown of lights on her head to show the way. They didn't have mining helmets in the day, which is why she risked generations of Scandinavian chicks' hair by using lit candles.

Here is a well-known artist's rendering cropped down to focus on the salient point.



LOLLLL, I love Catholic art. The eyes in the bowl! They have eyelids. And no blood.

I'd kind of like to see Gerard Way's rendering of this occasion.

Comments

[laughingrat]

See, there's a Renaissance painting that's pretty famous, from a Venetian artist I think cos I remember it had that special Venice light thing going, and it totally showed eyeballs. Onna plate. But St. Lucy was but one of many saints in the painting, so there was no close-up on gory eyeballs or anything.

On the day we discussed the painting, our professor brought in these rubber bouncy-balls shaped like eyeballs and threw them at us. BGSU's art history department was so wacky.

[cimorene]

But still not as wacky as when Professor Saruman stopped his lecture about survey sampling to draw a meter-high Donald Duck running down a hill chased by a snowball on the dry erase board in three different colors of marker.

[laughingrat]

That IS pretty great.

[mecurtin]

I've always liked this version, myself.

[cimorene]

The little stick is surrealer fo sho. And her face is great. But the full version of the one I've cropped is rather nicer - color and composition wise. Also, doesn't have that slightly squashed face that medieval paintings often had.

[mecurtin]

Linky mclinkerson, plz? Or at least an artist name?

[cimorene]

Nope, sorry, I didn't look, I just saved it. Wax already knew it though, so I'm sure it's not obscure at all. It popped up in the first few pages of Google for Sancta Lucia.